In my most recent homily from our Sunday Chapel service, I connected my love of hosting dinner parties to a time when I experienced a healing encounter with someone who had a different view of the world than I do. The lesson I learned is simple: hospitality opens the door for previously inconceivable futures. Enemies need not remain enemies if we are open to seeing them differently. This theme has crept into the past several homilies. This makes sense given the state of our world. Our nation and world are struggling to imagine a flourishing future together. We simply can’t imagine a world where there is truly room for all of us. As a result, we seek to dominate one another rather than share the abundance of the earth with one another and future generations.
In Emergent Strategy, adrienne maree brown (a social justice facilitator, healing, and doula from Detroit, Michigan, who does spell their name in all minuscule letters) reminds us to think locally. She writes, “What we practice at the small scale sets the patterns for the whole system.” In other words, we can begin making the macro-world we want to see in our micro-relationships. If we want to see kindness, generosity, and peace in the world, we have to build it in our lives and trust that the seeds we sow in the lives of others will bear fruit that still others will enjoy. brown encourages us to “see our own lives and work and relationships as a front line, a first place we can practice justice, liberation, and alignment with each other and the planet.”
Making the shift from macro to micro helps us on many levels. First, it helps us recover our power. Bearing witness to large-scale injustice can cause us to temporarily misplace our power simply because we are overwhelmed. I reclaim my power when I understand that I can always do something in my family, community, and social networks. For Americans, this is a reminder that the responsibilities of citizenship don’t start and stop at the polling booth. There is always work we can do to improve our society. Second, shifting our perspective teaches us the sort of grace only learned in community. We learn to give and receive forgiveness in our everyday relationships because none of us is perfect. We all make mistakes, most often against our own intended outcomes. Third, this shift opens our minds. If we’re honest, very few of us are truly ready to live in a world the Hebrew prophets imagined where the lion and lamb lie down together. In my Christian tradition, John the Baptist preaches a message of repentance to prepare the way for the coming of the Messiah—Jesus of Nazareth. Repentance literally means to “change one’s mind.” John knew that no matter how badly we think we need saving, we’re not truly ready for the soul-deep salvation we really need. We insist too easily on our own way. We reflexively defend what ought to be surrendered. We aren’t ready to forgive and let go. We think the problem is primarily other people. This can feel impossible on the large scale; however, we can at least begin to imagine it one-on-one. And as we lay down our singular visions of the world, we can begin to co-create a new one that has room for all of us.
It’s hard to imagine this right now. I get that. We define our world as one dominated by scarcity. Perhaps food—Iftars after a long day of fasting during Ramadan, Easter dinner with family, even a quick meal with a friend in the bistro—can remind us that the world is primarily defined by abundance.
And that shift can make all the difference.
