All lost things have separation in common. Physically and psychologically, we humans can feel that. Within this human experience, we’re still figuring out what our brief lives mean. What we do know is that we’re pack animals. We crave connection just as strongly as the air we breathe. Born to cooperate and share, we need each other to survive. A divine altruism swims through us all. When our ancient ancestors lived together in small bands, finding one’s place in the family of things, as the poet Mary Oliver wrote, was easier. When times are hard, we bend toward each other, and tribal walls come down. Bending away, however, a chasm begins to grow.
The thought of a person cut off, ignored, and separated might be the worst hell one could imagine. In another effort to paint a story that’s hard to explain within the limits of language, Jesus described a terrible scene of what happens when separation takes place.* With a pantry full of life more than he can say grace over…the rich man’s little world had became commoditized. His attachment to objects became a wall, obscuring his heart’s view, which welcomed the saboteur’s whisper that “the other” is outside.
The story seems clear that good things won’t come to those who separate. I receive it as a reminder…a loving shot across my bow…that I am one link in this great chain of being. One seed growing in the same soil as every other. Like scarves of all different colors pulled out of the magician’s hat, knotted as one, we are divinely entangled. Actively participating in each other’s lives, we come to know in our bones that there is one shared grief, one shared hope, and one shared Life. Our operating systems come from a unified field, richly flowing just below the surface of what we see.
The parts of myself that I don’t accept, forgive, or integrate, become the things I hate outside of me. Maybe the rich man has no name in the story because he stands for the parts of all of us that withhold, ignore, and exclude. When “the other” becomes fully enfleshed in our field of vision, we see ourselves reflected in their eyes, and the truth is revealed: my neighbor is me.
–Jim Marsh, Jr., Bread of Life Church
