This article was written by Anna Shouse, Senior Minister of Unity of Austin, who is working
toward a world where love, kindness, inclusion, well-being, and abundance are the norm.
In the midst of the rumblings that escalated into World War I, Charles Fillmore, co-founder of the Unity Movement, the faith path in which I serve, wrote, “Since we know each one of us is a part of a great whole, a member of one great family, it is no longer necessary to hunt for those who are our brothers. All men are our brothers. All women are our sisters. All are equal in the sight of the divine mind. All are bound together by one common tie in a great universal brotherhood with all life. … Nothing in this world of ours is more needed than love. Not the narrow selfish love that demands the exclusive possession of its object, not the love that holds its object so close it stifles it, but the broad generous love which expresses itself in kindly spirit to all. Until such is practiced there can be no real, no universal brotherhood.” So true.
What stops us from expressing this big-hearted love and through it creating communities of inclusion, plenty, and peace? Fear. Fear can only see the surface of things. Fear, the supreme jailer, confines us to those it deems as “like us.” It tells us that safety is found there—that those who are different, and thus unknown, are dangerous. Fear doesn’t know that while yes, on the outside, people are different, inside we are all the same. I learned this first hand as a twenty-one-year-old enrolled in a large university with a sizable international student population.
I volunteered in Operation Friendship, a ministry that supported international students with holiday home stays in American families, fellowship groups, social activities, and cultural exchanges, all offered with respect for cultural identities and free of any proselytizing. In that rich environment I grew close to people from Nigeria, Saudi Arabia, Iran, Germany, Japan, India, Greece, Yemen, and more. These friends shared their food, customs, religion, culture, language, perceptions of their home countries and of the U.S., their difficulties, aspirations, and joys. We relished our differences and also lamented the friction that misunderstandings could cause. Sometimes our common ground appeared in the humblest forms. Abdullah from Riyadh and I had gotten identical childhood advice—he from his Saudi Arabian Muslim mother and me from my American Southern Baptist one—“don’t sit around too long with wet hair— you’ll catch a cold!” How could it be that a person raised halfway around the world in a culture so different from my own have the “same” mother? Simple—we are all different and we are all the same.
My international friends allowed me to see inside their hearts. And I allowed them into mine. In a world stirring with its usual turmoil, where our governments may or may not have been on friendly terms, we created community. We let go of fear, reached out with love, opened up, shared, and developed trust. How? By making the choice not to stop at the barred gate of our dissimilarities. That choice is open to every one of us at all times. It requires of us the honesty to admit that we are fearful of difference. It demands the courage to stop masking our fear by condemning others. It obliges us to foster the energy needed to move out of isolation. Every one of us has the ability to do these three things. Our world is ready for a spacious, gracious flowing river of love. Don’t look around to see who might be willing to initiate that flow. Look into your own heart – you know that person is you.
