This first week of the Advent season will be filled with more about Ubuntu by Michael Battle.
Ubuntu is the interdependence of persons for the exercise, development, and fulfillment of their potential to be both individuals and community. This is why extended family is so important in African societies. Through extended family, an individual becomes capable of living a larger life, not only through those related by blood, kinship, or marriage but through humanity itself, conceived as a family one joins at birth and in which no one is a stranger.
What a good image of community. Then again, this could be also the worst part of community. What if the larger life that is connected with others is only a connection to some. It may be a village. It may be a tribe....a city...an extended family. If we do not have the ability to extend ourselves beyond our group or larger extended family, it seems to me that it can become quite demonic. On community of close-knit people can become the ones who threaten and go to war with another community. Ubuntu seems to rest on the understanding that this connectedness is to run throughout humanity. No one is outside. No one is beyond our relationships. We can and must be one and refuse to have any issue or cause or action separate us or call us stranger. When we cannot be that expansive, we will become like a cult - speaking good words about community but speaking them with little respect toward those not "with us."
Connection: There are simply too many ways to come up with reasons to divide. It takes courage to reach across the lines of our own separation.
Lord of Creation, when you make us in your image, it is within the beauty of our differences that you see this image and it is handed to us as our own. Continue to make us bold and uncover the many facets of our humanity that help to build bridges to new life. Amen.
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