Whether we’re thinking about our current national political and cultural realities, the mood of our Association, recent events in our city, or even the state of things within our own congregation, many of us are decrying what seems to be a deepening sense of division, of separation.  The classic question, “Why can’t we all just get along?” is being asked over and over again.  It’s a good and important question.

It’s one that many of us can ask in reference to our own families, as well.  I can’t tell you how many conversations I’ve had over the years with people who are dreading some upcoming gathering of their extended family.  “We can’t talk about politics,” they’ll say, or, “I just hope they don’t start telling me again how they’re praying for me because I’m a Unitarian Universalist.”  Sometimes it’s not even these “big issue” things; sometimes it’s just an intra-family squabble that has led to children breaking off contact with their parents, siblings going silent, or parents feeling the need to create distance and boundaries.

Can’t we all just get along?  Sometimes it certainly seems not.

This month the theme we’re exploring is “Independence/Interdependence.”  The seventh principle we Unitarian Universalists have covenanted together to “affirm and promote” is the interconnected web of all existence of which we are a part.  We affirm that all of creation — that all that is – is connected, and that we humans are only a part of the whole.  We affirm that we are a part – and not apart, as we often seem to think – while at the same time acknowledging that we are only a part of the whole – “no less than the stars and the trees.”

In the Buddhist tradition this truth is depicted in the image of The Diamond Net of Indra.  Indra’s net is a gigantic, cosmic-sized net that has a jewel at each intersection.  Each jewel reflects and so, in a sense, contains all of the others.  It’s a nice image, isn’t it?  I remember listening to a Zen teacher reflecting on this image by lifting up a, then, relatively newly recognized attribute of holography.  A regular photographic negative contains the entire image, but if you cut it in half and then shine a light through one of those halves, you’ll see image that was recorded only on that section of the film.  Holographic plates, though, are different.  Each section contains all of the information necessary to recreate the entire image.  So if you cut a holographic plate in half and then shine a laser through that half, you’ll see the entire image projected.  And if you cut that half in half, that quarter-plate will still allow you to project the entire image.  Each time the resolution of the projected image is degraded a little, but even the smallest part of the plate contains all of the rest.

What does any of this have to do with whether or not we can “all just get along?”  Just this:  if we think that in order to “get along” we have to be able to agree with one another or, at least, be able to look past our differences, then I truly believe that we don’t have much of a chance.  Some of the things about which we disagree are simply too important to “look past.”  Sometimes trying to “get along” in this sense means compromising on one’s values, or intentionally or unintentionally reinforcing the status quo.  Not all “differences of opinion” are reconcilable.  There are some things about which we disagree with one another that are simply too important to let go of even for the sake of “getting along.”

This isn’t necessarily cause for despair, though.  I believe that we can move toward really “getting along” if we can recognize that we are all interconnected, and that we are, truly, fundamentally, foundationally interdependent.  And not just recognize this as an interesting intellectual thing, but to make it a bedrock for the way we live our lives.  What would it mean to live your life not just aware of, but because of our interconnectedness.  How would you interact with those family members, or those friends, or those politicians, or those whoever-they-are, focusing on the reality of your mutual interdependence instead of your insolvable disagreements?

I do realize that many of the things that we disagree most vociferously with others about stem exactly and precisely from a disagreement of whether we are, in fact, interrelated or whether some of us are disposable.  As I’ve said, there are some things, as Dr. King said, to which we all ought to be maladjusted.  We should not simply forget these disagreements, or deny them, or “give in” in order that the Thanksgiving Dinner will be pleasant.  But while we disagree, while we work for justice, while we work to affirm and promote our principles, let us never lose sight that “we” and “they” belong to one another, are made of the same stuff as each other, inter-are (to borrow a word from Thich Nhat Hanh).  No matter how strongly you believe that you are “right” and they are “wrong,” the hope of our being able to “get along” is in our capacity for remembering that we are both part of the interconnected web of all existence.

Pax tecum,

RevWik