Ideas and Relationships

     I am occasionally asked where the ideas for my columns come from. I suppose I could be flippant and say something like "divine inspiration" (well, I do hope that there's something of spiritual value in them), or I could go the egotistical route and claim that I am exceptionally brilliant (something I try not to do more than once or twice a week, and which any number of people would be more than happy to refute).

     The truth is, of course, that ideas, whether for this column or anything else, come from many places. A good many of mine come from my readers and their comments. So, as they say, keep those emails, cards and letters coming folks. You can email me directly or reach me through the newspaper. And many ideas come from my family and friends.

     The point I want to make is that our ideas come out of our relationships. You and I, dear reader, are in a relationship, even though I have never met most of you. I do, however, want to thank those of you who have taken the time to introduce yourselves when you have seen me out and about in the real world.

     And of course we're all in relationships of various kinds with our family and friends. When I write, I try to make sure that I anonymize (if that's a word) the people who've given me a particular idea. Apparently not always successfully. My daughter's mother tells me that her congregation remarked on a reference to her in a column. Oops.

     As I have pursued the concept of Golden Rule living, I have been led to wonder if the difficulty that we have in solving the world's problems is not a lack of ideas so much as it is a lack of relationships.

     The Golden Rule is all about relationships. We cannot "Do unto others as we would have them do unto us" if we don't understand the "others" in the first place. That just leads to "us" imposing our views on "others".

     And of course, that's a common occurrence, isn't it? A favorite author of mine, Keith Laumer, wrote some wonderful satirical stories based on his experiences as a diplomatic attaché. Laumer found it incredible to watch his colleagues trying to negotiate with people whose cultures they had never made any effort to learn about. It wasn't a language barrier, it was a lack of basic understanding of the concepts that the language was meant to describe.

     We may have better communications and a more global perspective now, but we still lack a basic understanding of the needs and wants of people we have never met. And instead of working to gain that understanding, we make an assumption that what we want is what those "others" must want also.

     We have the same challenge on an individual level. When relationships with friends or family become strained, it's often because we're trying to impose what's best for "us" on to "them". Or because "they" are trying to impose what's best for "them" onto "us."

     Golden Rule living won't work that way. It's only possible if we are committed to equal relationships.

     God too is all about relationships. There is an intimate relationship between God and all of Creation. A relationship that is mostly beyond our comprehension. We can, however, see the effect of that relationship. Its one of the reasons that we can see the presence of God in a sunset. Or in a child's smile. Or in a grandmother's dimming eyes.

     And it's why we can see God in each other.

     If we're willing to accept the relationship.

     It's just an idea.