Getting to I-Thou

 

Yesterday I wrote about the I-Thou relationship which Martin Buber espouses. Today I follow up with a quote from the great African American mystic and theologian Howard Thurman and hopefully connect the two.

“The first step toward love is a common sharing of a sense of mutual worth and value. This cannot be discovered in a vacuum or in a series of artificial or hypothetical relationships.” (Jesus and the Disinherited)

I believe that both are speaking to authenticity, connectedness and commonality or community. I also believe that both are distinguishing right relationship or righteousness from self-righteousness and discrimination.

Thurman goes on to make two points about mutual worth and value shared. He says that true common worship is intended to honor such mutuality and bring it forth. He also says that Jesus demonstrated this right relationship by coming alongside the poor, the disinherited, the weak. 

Unfortunately, Thurman also points out that religion has been used to segregate rather than integrate. This is still the case after hundreds of years. 

Yet, praying with Thurman and Buber, offers me an opportunity to imagine a different way. I believe that part of that way is to reorient toward the sacred in all of us. I am thinking about reverence now. That is a way to not only come alongside but to also get to the Thou instead of the objectified It. May this Lent bring us closer to true common worship and thus to God and each other.