A number of years back I was involved in an organisation called Sydney Alliance. This was a coalition of faith groups, trade unions and community organisations who all worked together to campaign for better public transport, affordable, renewable energy, refugee rights and other things they all agreed would benefit their city. I went up initially for their Two Day Training, which is where you learn the basics of community organising, and start to build relationships with other groups. When I stepped into the training room, I realised it was made up of one of the most diverse groups of people I’d ever seen: nurses in button-down shirts and determined expressions, burly transport union guys, women in hijabs. That day I met Jewish people, Muslim people, Salvation Army people and lots of Uniting Church people. Together, the learnt the building blocks of how to work together for common goals; how to move past our difference so that we could be one.
The key tool we learnt was the Relational Meeting. This is a one-to-one meeting with someone you don’t know very well, where you simply get to know each other. The aim is to begin to build a relationship: where did this person grow up? Why do they live where they do now? What motivates them? What do they care most deeply for? The room, before we knew it, was smiling, laughing and connecting in meaningful ways. We weren’t counselling each other or going into the deepest darkest depths of our personal archives. But we were getting below the surface, to touch on the reasons we all did what we did. This, we learnt, would be the glue that would bind us together, as we began to work together on issues that were insurmountable if we did it alone. It was a relational togetherness that bound us, something deeply human that warmed and animated the room. It was the beginnings, I think, of love.
St Paul writes about love in the section of his letter to the Ephesians we are meditating on this week (chapter 4, verses 1 to 16). He wants the recipients of his letter to “bear with each other in love”, maintaining “unity of the Spirit” and the “bond of peace”. He points out how different everyone is: all the different gifts that people have. Some are good at travelling and telling others about the faith, others are good at looking after people, others are really good teachers. There’s no point being jealous of the gifts others have: just be glad and encourage each other! Embody love, and that is how we will not be divided, but will be one.
There is a special kind of oneness that is one not because everyone is the same, but because everyone is different. There is a special kind of oneness that draws people together in relationship and love, across our differences. There is a special kind of oneness that does not fear diversity, but embraces it.
It is the opposite of Donald Trump’s ‘Make America Great Again’, which is predicated on the cultural sameness of whiteness – excluding and marginalising anything that is a threat to that. No, this kind of oneness is more like a field of wildflowers, which is beautiful and robust because it is diverse. Its oneness is the product of its diversity, all the parts held together in relationship which each other…flowers, grasses, mites, bugs, caterpillars, little animals that roam around and make their home in the rainbow-hued fields.
Oneness and diversity is what we are called towards. And we hold each other together in love.
Words by Rev Andreana
Image by Kristina Paukshtite
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