Tuesday, 24 February, 2004

For awhile we will base the devotions on “God for a Secular Culture” by Jurgen Moltmann.



In both personal and political life, community depends quite essentially on whether we are able to perceive ‘the others’ and to know and acknowledge them; or whether in ‘the other’ we see only the reflection of our own selves, and embrace them in our own image, so as to subject them to our own ideas. On the one other hand, our perceptions and our ideas of ‘the others’ are always shaped by our social relationships to them, and by the public form our community with them takes. So we might say: without knowledge there is no community, and without community no knowledge.



Can we meet, greet and enjoy life together with ‘the other’ on terms that are based on embracing them only if they fit our own image? In communication, Rabbi Edwin Friedman notes that “people can only hear you when they are moving toward you.” If I am too ‘other’ I surely wouldn’t be moving toward you and therefore, the chance of us really getting to know one another for the person you or I may be is difficult. Then again, if what initially draws me to you is that which is like me, then there is the possibility that in time I may see what else is in you…and that may have an impact on what I now see as ‘other’ for the ‘other’ is now one like me…somewhat. It is unfortunate that too many people try to find reason upon reason not to face those who may not be enough like me. We want those who are ‘other’ to be not too much so, for we like the world just as we know it and see it.



Connection: One of the greatest journeys in this day is the one when we walk up to the mirror and find even in this familiar face changes...from new lines to less hair to…

For in seeing those signs of ‘otherness,’ we may be open to those around us who are truly ‘other.’



Lord, you are hidden and yet you are eternally available and present to us. Keep us open to the way your Spirit has the power to turn our heads so that we are given the opportunity to see life from a new perspective. Amen.