Humanity's Universal Need for Community

After my initial disappointment with the controversy surrounding Sen. Barack Obama and his pastor and friend, Rev. Jeremiah Wright, I began to turn away from the highly charged media coverage in order to gain some perspective. My immediate realization was that on a human level the situation represented a rupture in the community these men had built over the last two decades. This community included the two individuals, their families, extended families, friends and fellow congregants in the church, their spiritual home.

Community is what every human being on earth yearns for whether they recognize it or not. It is where we find the support we need to thrive and survive. Throughout our lives we seek out places and people with whom we feel we belong, whether it is with family, friends or in spiritual and secular organizations. Those who find it are fortunate indeed.

Community isn’t easy. When we think about our own lives, we know that we have friends and family members whose beliefs and views on religion, politics and everything else in life are sometimes diametrically opposed to our own. It often takes extraordinary patience and tolerance just to maintain basic family ties, not to mention the care and nurturing required in keeping our friendships healthy and alive.

I learned through the years that the key is to give others the benefit of the doubt. This too isn’t easy. It requires rising above the ego mind, which insists on naming others either right, if they believe and act as we do, or wrong, if they don’t.

After giving the Sen. Obama situation a great deal of thought, I decided to apply the same healing remedy.

I choose to believe that Sen. Obama is an intelligent man, with high integrity and ethics. I can also accept that he was trying to live his faith, which admonishes him to love his friend, but not his beliefs or his actions, which is what we all try to do with our friends and family members every day of our lives. It is not a big stretch from there to entertaining the possibility that because Sen. Obama believed he was solid in his own beliefs he could successfully keep his friend’s inflammatory views separate from his life and his career. Privately, we’re all able to do this. Politically it is another thing altogether—perception is everything.

I also can appreciate the possibility that being part of a congregation for two decades that is representative of individuals in this country who feel disenfranchised could be the source of Sen. Obama’s passion to help bring healing and unity to our nation.

At the end of each day, I pray that all the presidential candidates are caring, commendable human beings. The fact that they have willingly placed themselves open to microscopic scrutiny and a ridiculous marathon of events in order to serve us and our country certainly sets them apart from the rest of us. This is my recommended daily thought-affirmation-prayer: I affirm, accept and expect the highest and best outcome for America in this upcoming election. And So It Is!

Those who believe in Sen. Obama will eventually go with what is in their hearts. And, in the final analysis, that is what we all have to do in this process, stretch our minds to be aware and follow our hearts as this is where truth lives. We have to do this every day in order to have any community with others. This is what we are called to do as conscious, spiritually aware and mature human beings. If we had to do only with those who believed exactly as we do, we would soon find ourselves sitting alone in a room staring at the walls.
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Copyright © 2008 Fern Stewart Welch

The author’s book THE HEART KNOWS THE WAY—How to Follow Your Heart to a Conscious Connection with the Divine Spirit Within is available at Amazon.com and other online booksellers, as well as through major bookstores such as Barnes & Noble and Borders.