At the World Series of Birding, there is a longstanding tradition of “breaking bread with the enemy.” This takes the formal form of a “swap meet” on the Thursday night before the competition. The informal breaking of bread with the enemy is a continual process that begins as soon as two birders who are scouting for their respective teams meet in the field. It also takes the form of shared trips into the field, and this year it even included a web site updated daily by one of the top-flight teams. Our team, the Wicked Witchities, was able to add a number of nests and one particularly active feeder because we were in regular contact with other teams’ scouts. In fact, on most days of the week preceding the competition, at least one of my teammates was scouting with one or more scouts from another team. One day I met up with another team’s scout in the field who had been speaking to one of my teammates more recently than I had! All of this is the case because we all believe that a rising tide raises all boats. In other words, one way to help one team do well is by helping all the teams do better. Even though this is a competitive event, there is more emphasis on the birds than the birders. Of course I want my team to do better than other teams, but while we are witchities and they are luna-ticks or lagerheads, we are all lovers of birds and trying to help preserve them and the environment that sustains them.
Unfortunately, this sort of mutual aid and cooperation is all too rare in our dog-eat-dog world today. Even more sad is the way in which the divisive and demeaning practices rampant in our culture work their way into the practices of our churches. I’m particularly sorry that our local congregations remain islands of independent effort. There is a wealth of talent eager to be used in God’s service residing in the pews of all the church buildings around us as well as our own. We have all found ourselves from time to time bemoaning the fact that we don’t have enough people or other resource to accomplish some worthy goal. Perhaps if we paused every time we spoke like this and simply imagined the same conversation happening in another congregation we would begin to understand the truth that “there is no they….just more of us!” Some of us here and some more of us there could get together and get more done. I really don’t understand why there isn’t more desire for this sort of solution. Perhaps part of it lies in diminished expectations based on history. The expected way of connecting with other churches would first be through our denomination. Particularly in the United Church of Christ, we only have connection if we make it happen since there is no hierarchy to impose it. Since there seems to be a natural tendency to grant authority to those willing to represent us at wider settings, we have at times gotten ourselves into the spot of looking to “them” (i.e. the staff in Framingham or in Cleveland) to do things for “us.” But (and don’t tell me you didn’t see this coming) there is no they! There is no “they” who will come and fix our problems, there is no “they” who are the cause of our problems, there is no “they” who are the ones we need to oppose…or support. The truth about the church is that we are the body of Christ and therefore we are one. We are the ones who are both solution and source of all our problems, we are the one body, which includes diverse and opposing views and positions. With Christ as our head we don’t lack for direction. With the Holy Spirit as the breath filling the lungs of this body with life, we lack for nothing. We are strong enough to change the world, but only as we recognize our unity. If a bunch of crazed birders can find a way to work together for the common good in the course of a heated competition, then perhaps there is hope for the
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