Ginny Hathaway is a retired Methodist clergy who comes to the blog and always makes thoughtful comments. This is her response to the question, “Can love build a bridge between people who are atheist and those who are religious?” This is her response:
“I, too, have a number of friends who are atheists…also interesting, ethical, loving people. And they are persons with whom I agree on many things. We listen deeply to each other and grow and change in the process. I wonder if there might be a lot of fear involved in the hostility that exists between some “believers” and some atheists. Not fear of the “other” so much as fear of ourselves, fear of encountering and engaging points of view that might open us up to really thinking, questioning, searching…even, maybe, resulting in our not being able to cling quite so tightly to our certainties. Real relationships bring with them changes in our status quo, intellectual and emotional. Sometimes we creatures of habit, ruts, well worn paths and yearnings for settled security draw back from that, not so much because of what is “other” about the other, but because of what is naggingly “other” within ourselves that we may not want to embrace.” -Ginny Hathaway
When humanity splits into two irreconcilable camps it is often because one worldview has died and another is being born. At first it appears to each camp that they represent the future and their opponents represent the skeletal hand of a dead past. Instead, each of the two camps represent one polarized aspects of a new insight beyond either of them.
Ginny’s comments rang true with me. After joining the Unitarian Universalist church, the joy for me was being able to sit in conversation with people who hold widely varying beliefs, yet finding openness to these points of view while discovering common ground and common truth – war is not good for anyone except maybe those who make a profit from it but don’t actually use the weapons, that immigrants are people and need to be treated with worth and dignity, that injustice anywhere is injustice everywhere (thank you, Dr. King), that same-sex marriage is as much an expression of human love as is heterosexual marriage (and at the moment, requires more courage), and that reproductive rights are as basic as any other right granted by society or constitution.
Thanks Jim. I agree that Ginny is a good writer and thinker.