Together?

Dear Kate,

How do we "connect"? that's often our question, "come together" in a better way, with our family and friends, lovers and colleagues, people of our culture and country, maybe even eventually—or rather, fundamentally—cosmically with our own species and beyond.

It's a question laden with and would need to labor for a well-intentioned assumption: that we do, in some way, belong together.  The matter at issue is to figure out the How, the Way, a better way, for us to stay "in this together."

But what if human beings are estranged in our very essence?  We don't often seem to ask this principal and perennial human question that is of paramount importance.

It's easy to see why, why it is important, and that's also why it's not so easy for us to see.

Consider this: a man wants to be loved the "right way."  He wants to stare his lover in the eyes for a good long moment daily to feel what he has felt the day before, a love-in-progress to be perfected with his diligent daily dose of being stared back at, guarding against potential barriers, staring down the barrel of whatever it might be to cause a disconnect.  Strange example?  Maybe I put it too strangely.  It's rather common, if you do try to see commonly.  It is not easy to see commonly.

Consider also, a question: Do you think harmony and understanding can ever be achieved among all the nations of our world?  Yes, at least maybe, if human beings are not in essence estranged, alienated from each other.  However, for example, if we have in us irradicable aggressive impulses (towards each other and the rest of Creation), and the best we could do is to somehow and somewhat keep our destructive tendency under control, then we shouldn't be so foolish to wish or plan for something as far-fetched as universal understanding or global harmony.  We should congratulate ourselves for simply not killing each other—and ourselves.

I will give you two more examples, but would invite you to work them out on your own.

Are we, human beings, estranged in essence? is not a question we ask in church.  We say we know our Bible well, so well that it's unthinkable to not see ourselves "coming together" in some meaningful, life-affirming way.  So unthinkable that we might as well not think at all and just assume.  But what is the reality?  The reality is we can't even think of a way, however tentative and temporary, to stay "connected" with each other.  Week after week we labor for our well-intentioned assumption—in vain, possibly?

Another thought exercise: go back to the second example above about universal harmony and global understanding, and consider what is happening in Ukraine now.  Think like a Pacifist and justify to me why war and violence are unjustifiable.  Go to your Bible if you need to and I will pull out my Bible too, and we shall compare mythologies.

May I close with stating something obvious, something commonplace?  It is not about finding a more "authentic" way for us to connect.  It never has been.  Unauthentic human beings do not connect authentically whichever way that's presented to them.  Authentic human being strive to connect even in the most repressive, impossible personal circumstances and historical situations.

The questions then, are, Are we authentically human? Can we ever be? And of course, who is an authentic human anyway?

Yours, Alex