US. . .THEM. . .

Martin Buber provided us with the concept ‘I-Thou.’  In some indigenous cultures an ‘I’ recognizes a ‘Thou’ with the words: ‘I see You!’  As I sit here in the coffee shop this morning watching folks come and go I pause and ask: ‘How many of these folks do I really see?’  How many ‘Its’ have come and gone and how many ‘Thous’ have come and gone.  I make a point of ‘seeing’ each employee; partly because I do want to ‘see’ them and partly because so many folks who come to be served by them don’t seem to ‘see’ them.

What stimulated my thinking this morning was a recollection.  I don’t always know what triggers my recollections and so I don’t spend a great deal of time trying to source them; such it is this morning.  Anyway, my recollection involved my sitting with a group of eight employees and our conversation about ‘Us and Them.’  There are those in our world who view the world through the lens of ‘Us and Them.’  It is, it seems to me, a fairly common viewing.  But I am not thinking of this, I am thinking of those who truly see the world through this lens of ‘Us and Them.’  This is their perception of the world and it scares me to no end.  Why?  Well, for those who perceive the world to be this way results in a dual world — the way a child might perceive the world as ‘either/or.’  For ‘Us-Them’ folks it appears as if there are people of the light and people of the darkness; the sheep and goats, the saved and the damned.  There is no argument — no searching and no seeking — for the children of the light, the sheep and the saved will win out and the rest will lose.  Should a child of the darkness, or a goat or one who is damned seek to address the other the other will not hear, much less heed, what is said.  Why?  The child of darkness, the goat and the damned are NOT ONE OF US and so they do not deserve our attention (there is no hope for them anyway).

Consider that ‘righteousness,’ intelligence, integrity, humanity, freedom, and ‘victory’ belong to ‘Us’ while wickedness, hypocrisy, brutality, stupidity and ultimate defeat belong to ‘Them.’  What is overwhelming sad for me is that for those who have learned to deny the complexities of life; who deny that we humans are imperfect; who deny that each of us — at our healthiest — are living paradoxes of good/evil, light/darkness, virtue/vice.  Many of those ‘Us’ folks who have cut through (denied?) the complexities of life are seen as prophets to be followed; they are seen and hailed as the bearers of ‘the truth’ and ‘the way’ and support the old adage of ‘Us’ folks: ‘If you are not with US you are against US — you are, sad souls — one of THEM.’  Rather than accept ‘Them’ ‘Us’ folks pray for them and ‘love’ them even though the ‘Us’ folks don’t believe that any of ‘Them’ will be saved.

I have wandered in the land of ‘Us’ and ‘Them’ — sometimes as an ‘Us’ and at others times as a ‘Them.’  No matter which side I am on I find this land not to be one of milk and honey but to be a wasteland that is not able to nurture life.  The land of paradox, for me, is the land of milk and honey — it is Eden for me.  It is not easy for me to live in the land of paradox; but it is life-giving and life-sustaining and provides HOPE for each one who resides in this land.