Reflection
We humans are relational beings. We yearn to be loved, to be part of a community—a community of family, of friends, of the workplace, of the neighborhood. As a human species we are essentially one and a part of an interconnected seamless web of life. We want to form bonds, to be accepted, to belong. Yet, so often this basic desire is blocked. Often we find ourselves living in distrust or conflict when we yearn to live in unity and peace. Our own insecurities and prejudices or those of others thwart our essential longing for relationship. When we learn to accept others in their strengths and fragilities, we may find that we gain the acceptance for which we long.
Prayer
May we foster bonds of unity, healing and relationship. Help us to turn outward and to embrace all creation with reverence and love.
Action
Try to reach out to others and try to meet them with a limitless acceptance that has no room for hatreds or enmity. Meditate on the reality that all is one.
Suggested Reading
Behold, how good and how pleasant it is for brethren to dwell together in unity!
Psalm 133:1
A lively awareness of our relatedness helps us to look upon and to treat each person as a true sister or brother; without fraternity it is impossible to build a just society and a solid and lasting peace.
Pope Francis
The social progress, order, security and peace of each country are necessarily connected with the social progress, order, security and peace of all other countries.
Pope John XXIII
As man draws nearer to the stars, why should he not also draw nearer to his neighbor?
Lyndon B. Johnson
Each of us is a being in himself and a being in society, each of us needs to understand himself and understand others, take care of others and be taken care of himself.
Daniel Clark Long
Independence is middle-class blasphemy. We are all dependent on one another, every soul of us on earth.
G.B. Shaw
Man’s greatest blunder has been in trying to make peace with the skies instead of making peace with his neighbors.
Elbert Hubbard
May all live believing in the equality of all that lives.
May all beings be filled with joy and peace.
Let your love flow outward toward the universe,
A limitless love without hatred or enmity.
From Sutta Nyata Buddha’s Discourse on Good Will
Spiritual relationship is far more precious than physical. Physical relationship divorced from spiritual is body without soul.
Mahatma Gandhi
Courage means to keep working a relationship, to continue seeking solutions to difficult problems, and to stay focused during stressful periods.
Denis Waitley
Nothing is perfect. Life is messy. Relationships are complex. Outcomes are uncertain. People are irrational.
Hugh Mackay
If civilization is to survive, we must cultivate the science of human relationships – the ability of all peoples, of all kinds, to live together, in the same world at peace.
Franklin D. Roosevelt
It is not our purpose to become each other; it is to recognize each other, to learn to see the other and honor him for what he is.
Hermann Hesse
When you stop expecting people to be perfect, you can like them for who they are.
Donald Miller