"Multi-Ethnic" week

Here at ****** we have experienced yet another week of “multiculturalism”, “multi-ethnic programs”, “diversity awareness”, or whatever you would choose to call it. Take your pick because each title is pretty much the same.

Yet, I believe that if we seriously desire unity within our community, Jean Vanier’s From Brokenness to Community helps to point the way. It does not and will not give us a formula to follow or a how-to but a deeper understanding of ourselves and our fellowman.

However, I must warn you, it will challenge you. It will stretch you. It will cause you to rethink yourself and the God we profess to serve. It will make you uncomfortable to call yourself a Christian if you are wearing a mask or doing the Christian life by quantifying your spirituality.

Vanier describes community but what got me was his concept of communion. He defines communion as "love and friendship"..."Communion means accepting people just as they are, with all their limits and inner pain, but also with their gifts and their beauty and their capacity to grow: to see their beauty inside of all the pain. In the relationship of communion, you are you and I am I; I have my identity and you have yours. I must be myself and you must be yourself. We are called to grow together, each one becoming more fully himself or herself” (16-7).

Knowing and loving people as they are, this type of communion and not community, is what we should strive for. Community is nice and good, but communion with one another–that would blow my mind. We could be a bunch of Jesus-loving, radical-about-people, world changers. And you ask, “How would Vanier’s idea of communion be possible?”

“We can only truly love people who are different, we can only discover that difference is a treasure and not a threat, if in some way our hearts are becoming enfolded in the heart of the Father, if somewhere God is putting into our broken hearts that love that is in God’s own heart for each and every human being ” (20-1).

It is by knowing people, first and foremost, with God’s love for them that will transform our community. And no matter how highly we think of ourselves, I know I’m not there yet. There are times I resist God’s love for others and its continual attempts to enfold my selfish, conceited, egocentric heart. And no matter how much I choose the weaker impulse (God’s desire for me to love my spiritual brother or sister), there are just as many times or more that I choose the stronger (my fleshly desire).