The Beloved Community

Sometimes when we’re going through an event as momentous as the COVID-19 pandemic, it’s too close to be able to understand the larger forces at work in it. So for perspective and insights, let’s go back to another event that shook us to the core: the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

In their aftermath, many Americans became living proof that it is possible for us to be in — Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s inspired phrase — the Beloved Community. In New York City, a megalopolis where people are often divided by class, race and ethnicity, where it’s easy to be impersonal toward the countless strangers whom one comes up against daily, people found meaning in putting aside their own interests and even safety for the sake of those whom they didn’t know.

The vision of such a community was the driving force behind Dr. King’s efforts to end racial segregation, dehumanizing poverty and a war that he believed was destroying the soul of our nation. But the kind of community he envisioned wasn’t just any kind of group that forms when people come together. After all, the Ku Klux Klan and street gangs, exclusive clubs and gated-housing developments are also forms of belonging. The difference lies in the purpose these groups share in keeping other people out, and the Beloved Community’s goal of welcoming everyone.

Belonging is essential in developing our sense of personal identity. Our religious tradition, ethnic culture, professional organization, sports team, neighborhood ties and hobby circle all contribute to making us who we are. We need both what community does for us and what we can do for our communities. We need the united strength of such groups to protect our human rights (the minimum conditions for life in community) when we cannot do that alone. And the immense capacity in each of us for unselfish giving and cooperation finds a way to express itself when there are others who need us.

Often those others are very much like ourselves. But Dr. King’s gift to our society and the world was in sharing the greater vision of a community where no one is an outsider.

A great strength of our nation lies in its diversity and pluralism. Sometimes we don’t understand and perhaps fear those whose beliefs, values and actions differ from our own. Then we can shrink back and limit ourselves to the familiar and comfortable. Or we can come to a greater awareness of God’s transcendence by opening ourselves to other ways in which the divine creative power is shown forth.

Where was God on Sept. 11? In the family love of every victim whose last thoughts were of parents, spouses and children. And also in the strangers who needed help or gave it.

What have we learned? That we are capable of so much more than we usually give ourselves credit for: of thinking and acting without stereotypes, of giving without counting the cost to ourselves, of finding courage, meaning and joy when we act with and for others rather than against them. That religious fundamentalism of any kind is dangerous, for it draws a very small circle around us that excludes — and mistakenly believes that God excludes — the many more them.

We learned what many people on this small, finite, miraculous planet experience daily: that life is fragile and safety lies only in protecting the human rights of all people. We learned that going it alone doesn’t work and that our destiny is inextricably linked to peoples and cultures many of us were unaware of before, great numbers of whom are marginalized and treated as though they are non-members of the human race.

We know all this because we’ve heard the Gospel. Sharing in the faith of Jesus means doing what we can to build a more just, inclusive world near and far.

Barbara DiTommaso is a retiree and member of St. Vincent de Paul Parish in Albany.