Love is the Way: Out of Many One

I enjoy a family zoom conversations each week. It is great to keep in touch with siblings. It doesn’t involve the whole family, just the ones who grew up entirely together. I have other step brothers and sisters, they are just as much family of course they are. We were recently united due to the loss of the father of many of us and the man who was my stepdad and who I lived with from the age of three. Family for me is layered, large and quite complicated.

I often think of this as I look at the whole of humanity. We are connected and interconnected in all kinds of complicated ways. We are all born of the same one human family, on the one earth. Yet we create walls of separation, draw our borders too, but truth be told we are all the same children of the one earth, born under the one sun, children of a universal spirt of love and yet we have so often struggled to recognise this.

I recently watched an interview with Bishop Michael Curry. He is the head of the Episcopal church in the USA and perhaps best known as the Bishop who preached the sermon at Megan Markle and Prince Harry’s wedding a couple of years ago. It was a magnificent address that went global. The Bishop has a new book out titled  “Love is the Way”. During the interview he spoke the following words in Latin found on the “The Great Seal of United States”. The words are “E Pluribus Unum”.

“E Pluribus Unum” is translated as “Out of many, one” or sometimes “One out of many” or “One from many”. Bishop Curry explained the origin of phrase claiming that it came from Cicero’s paraphrase of Pythagoras in his “De Offciis”. It is an aspect of his discussion of basic family and social bonds being the very origins of societies and states. The full phrase is “Unus flat ex pleribus” This is translated as “When each person loves the other as much as himself, it makes one out of many.” I suspect it is the same spirit that was the motto of the three musketeers “one for all and all for one”. Isn’t this the principle at the core of the “Golden Rule of Compassion”, something found at the heart of virtually every tradition throughout human history. This is how we should live and yet we seem to find it oh so hard to do so.

This universal guiding principle of making one out of many seems particularly pertinent at this time as every single one of us on God’s sweet earth are united in this struggle with the pandemic. We are of course always caught up in the same struggles, as well as joys, it is just that we don’t always recognise this, that all are one and one are all. Sadly instead, we are caught up in dangerously divisive times, this division seems to have grown in recent years. Many do not see the other as brother and or sister. You see this amplified at the level of public debate. Yes, we should all speak our truth, but must do so in the spirit of love. We need to find ways to unite one another, to connect, to bridge those gaps formed by the walls of division, to learn to live from that love, that Divine Unity, to let love lead the way.

The great traditions, at their essence, speak of this Divine Unity. Yes of course this is not always practised and sadly the forces of division within them have been the driving forces of many of them down the centuries. That said it is not what they speak of from their essence.

The Abrahamic traditions (Judaism, Christianity and Islam) believe that all are created in the image of God, that all are formed from the one divine breath of life. Genesis 1 v 26a states “Let us make mankind in our image, in our likeness,”. Words that speak to the heart of me. I do believe that the essence of the Divine Love is within us all, therefore I try and live with this in mind, understanding that every act I do to another, is done in that image to another formed in the same image. You find similar words in Qur’an which states in the fourth chapter 'Oh people, be conscious of your Lord who created you from a single soul and created from her, her mate; and from them, many men and women scattered far and wide.' Thus suggesting that the unity of humanity is deep indeed; all people, men and women, are not only created by God but are descended from a single soul.

The Buddhist tradition extends this oneness beyond human beings to all sentient beings. I remember speaking with a Buddhist friend once who suggested that individual beings are like waves on the ocean. Now although each wave has a sense of its own separateness, what is described as its 'lesser self', it is better understood as part of the ocean, its 'greater self'. The key for each soul is to be awakened to the larger truth that we are a part of the ocean. I would say each part precious, a drop in the wider universal ocean. The ocean being the Divine Unity. We are all connected to the one universe. When we see this truth why would we reject or wish to damage another aspect of this Divine Unity. This brings to my mind the words of Jesus “what you do to the least of them you do to me. He recognised his and our Divine Unity. We truly are one.

We are all connected on this our planet and yet we build so many walls, so many borders, that separate us. How do we begin to live with a greater sense of oneness and interconnection? Well, if I’ve learnt anything I have learnt that the journey towards interconnection and togetherness, the spiritual journey, is not one of distance, nor is it a journey of detachment, the spiritual journey is one of connection.

The spiritual life is about connection. It is about connecting to a reality that is greater than our small selves. Living spiritually is about finding ways to connect to whatever it is that is of highest worth to us, whatever we hold sacred, whatever we regard as holy and for me that is everything. It is about finding ways to connect through the daily interactions of our lives; it is about learning how to live more openly even when the tough times come and those around us are refusing to do so.

This is not easy, but it is possible. I would like to offer the following simple practise that might just be able to let us do so. I found it in a book of meditations titled “Singing in the Night: Collected Meditations: Volume Five” edited by Mary Bernard. It is by David O. Rankin and is titled “Our Common Destiny”

“First, I must begin with my own creation. I must celebrate the miracle of evolution that resulted in a living entity named David. I must assist in the unfolding of the process by deciding who I am, by fashioning my own identity, by creating myself each day.  I must listen to the terrors, the desires, the impulses that clash in the depths of my soul. I must know myself, or I will be made and used by others.

Second, I must learn to affirm my neighbours. I must respect others, not for their function, but for their being. I must put others at the centre of my attention, to treat them as ends, and to recognise our common destiny. I must never use people to win glory, or to measure the ego, or to escape from responsibility. I must listen to their words, their thoughts, their coded messages.

Finally, I must value action more than intention. I must feel, think, judge, decide, and then risk everything in acts of gratuitous freedom. I must batter the walls of loneliness. I must leap the barriers of communication. I must tear down the fences of anonymity. I must destroy the obstacles to life and liberty. Not in my mind (as a wistful dream). But in my acts (as a daily reality).

Can we live as one? At one with ourselves, at one with one another, at one with those people who we see as being different to ourselves, can we live at one with all of life? Well I believe it is possible. It begins within our own hearts and souls and in the ways that we conduct our lives. It will not be easy though, as the forces of division are all around us and indeed within us.

Therefore, it must begin within our own hearts and souls in the way we live our own lives. It begins by learning to revere life as the most precious God given gift there is, that all are made in that one image. If we do this, we will surely no longer be able to create divisions within ourselves, one another and all life.