We Are All One
by Reverend Lane Williams
We begin this month with our Second Annual Spiritual Film Festival, which you can read more about on the following pages. We also are hosting the local Interfaith Peace Vigil. We will be joining with people around the world in holding the vision of peace on the planet. We know that prayer is a powerful agent for change. We know that the loving energy and uplifted consciousness of many people in many places holding that one thought in mind and feeling the essence of peace, can shift the consciousness of the greater population.
When we read the newspaper and listen to the news, we can see every report as a prayer request. We can add all the people in troubled parts of the world, all the world leaders, the economy, all of nature, and the planet itself to our prayer practice. We can concentrate our loving compassion on these challenges we are all facing, for what happens to one of us happens to us all. We are divinely connected and more and more it is becoming evident how much we are connected at the human level. As an example, we see how what happens in our economy affects the world’s economy. I saw a story on PBS about a woman, Suad Amiry, a Palestinian architect. Years before her father had fled his home in Jaffa, on the Mediterranean coast, in the midst of the 1948 war that led to the creation of Israel. She was born and raised in Jordan and Syria. She studied architecture in Lebanon and the United States before coming to the West Bank city of Ramallah.
In this news report she shared with us what life in an occupied country is like. “I always feel that each one of us has a multi-layer of identity. You know, I am a woman; I am an Arab; I am a Palestinian; I am a Mediterranean; I am a Muslim; I am many, many things… I grew up with a group of people. I really didn’t know who was Muslim, who was Christian. I didn’t know whether I was Sunni or Shiite until I went to university. ‘Are you Sunni or Shiite?’ they asked. I had no clue.”
Then she told this story, “I remember one time I was going home, and there was a checkpoint and a curfew in Ramallah. And the soldier stopped my car and said, ‘Go back.’ I said, ‘Back where? I’m coming from the university. I’m reaching home.’ He said, ‘No, there is a curfew. You can’t get home.’
He was peeling an orange at that time, so I looked at him, and I said, ‘I will only listen to your orders if you give me half of your orange.’ And the soldier just looked at this crazy woman, and he didn’t know what to do with me. He sat there, he peeled the orange, gave me half of it, and after that, he told me, ‘OK, you can go home now.’ At the end of the day we are human beings like one another.”
This woman’s words touched something in me. I see how we humans separate ourselves from each other. It’s part of the human condition. We add layers and layers of persona throughout the years, in effect boxing ourselves in. These roles that we take on for ourselves, instead of providing the desired security and safety, restrict our freedom into narrower and narrower grooves. Very rarely do we venture out from those grooves, our cocoons of familiarity, to explore the vast array of possibility open to us. The times I have done so are warm memories; those brief moments are still with me. When I have peeled my persona away, all my separation disappears. I have seen the wonder and beauty in all of humanity.
I remember the time as if I were there now, my eyes meeting the homeless man’s eyes on the street and seeing him, not his homelessness. I remember the loving interaction with the body-pierced teenager who helped me lift my suitcase onto the bus. It was truly a holy experience. There is only Christ consciousness – only the Christ. When I peel away the separation, there is God.
