Strangers are family you haven’t met, yet!

Let me share with you how unity consciousness played out in real life, during a meeting of hospice chaplains years ago. I was with a group of about 25 chaplains belonging to different religions and Christian denominations. When a new chaplain joins the group, there is always time set aside for self-introduction. In the interest of time, we introduce ourselves only by name and denomination.

So, we started from one end of the room.

“I am Joe, and I am a Presbyterian.”

“I am Patrick, and I am a Baptist.”

“I am Mark, and I am a Southern Baptist.”

“I am James, and I belong to the Church of Christ.”

And the next one said, “I am Janice and I belong to the United Church of Christ”

and the next one said, “I am Nick, I am a Methodist” and the next one:

“I am Cathy, and I belong to the United Methodist Church of Christ.”

And it went on as 24 of us introduced ourselves as belonging to a specific religious denomination, representing a particular theology.

When my turn came, I said:

“My name is Paul, and I am a human being.”

Some chuckled, others sneered, and some others rolled their eyes. During the break, the Rabbi who was new to the group that day, took me aside and said that she was intrigued by my introduction and wanted to talk to me more about it. I told her that I was not trying to be trite or trendy, foolish or flippant, but consciously aware of the meaning and implications of my identity.

According to the World Christian Encyclopedia (2000), global Christianity had 33,820 denominations which I believe is an abomination and an affront to Jesus whose final prayer was for unity among his followers.

Denominations are more divisive than divine.

I told my Rabbi colleague that if I say I am a Catholic, which I am by baptism, I am connected to about 2 billion people, because that is the total number of Catholics in the world.

If I say I am an American, which I am by citizenship, my connection shrinks to 320 million people.

If I say I am an Indian, which I am by birth, I am connected to 1.3 billion people.

These three identities connect me to about 3.5 billion people but leaves me unconnected to about more than half of humanity. Human is the only title that connects me to everyone on this planet.

Let me share with you another story where my awareness of humanity came into play. I received a call from a telemarketer. She was doing a customer satisfaction survey about a computer we had purchased from Dell. At the end of the survey, the caller requested three pieces of information, for demographic purpose: my age, gender, and race. I gave her my age and gender, and I stopped, because I didn’t want to identify myself as a member of a particular club, clan, or race.

And your race sir, she asked, and I said: Human.

There was dead silence at the other end, for a while. And then she said: “But I don’t have a box for that on this form; I have White, Black, Asian, or Other, and I have to put you in one of those boxes.”

I told her that I did not want to be in a box until I am dead and put the phone down. I don’t know if she was annoyed, amused, or amazed!

The reason why we feel the need to belong to separate groups and lack a feeling of unity and connection is because we don’t pay attention, or we are always in a hurry. We don’t have the time or the patience to slow down and to look beyond the peripheral and the obvious. If we walk in wakefulness and move with mindfulness and look beyond what we see, we can avoid a lot of troubles and enjoy a more serene life. It is about raising our consciousness to a higher level; it is about expanding our minds so that we transcend the separation between self and others and embrace a greater cause, the Universe itself.

It is about realizing that strangers are family we have not met yet. It is about experiencing the world around us with spine-tingling amazement.

One of my heroes and mentors, American spiritual giant, Thomas Merton, captures that experience in these powerful words:

In Louisville, at the corner of Fourth and Walnut, in the center of the shopping district, I was suddenly overwhelmed with the realization that I loved all those people, that they were mine and I theirs, that we could not be alien to one another, even though we were total strangers. It was like waking from a dream of separateness, of spurious self-isolation in a special world, a world of renunciation and supposed holiness…this sense of liberation from an illusory difference was such a relief and such a joy to me that I almost laughed out loud. And I suppose my happiness could have taken form in the words: Thank God, thank God that I am like other men — that I am only one person among others.

(from Cosmic Kindergarten: Earthly Lessons for a Heavenly Life)