IT’S NOT RELATIVE; IT’S RELATIONAL

Here’s a funny from beliefnet.com. “Five influential Jewish men: Moses said the law is everything. Jesus said that love is everything. Marx said capital is everything. Freud said sex is everything. Einstein said everything is relative.” Einstein, at least, was wrong. Everything is relational.

   Two stories to illustrate what I mean. First story: Arlena was on a flight from Spokane to Seattle and got into a conversation with a seatmate who asked her where she was from. “Back east,” she said. “So am I,” he said. “Where?” she asked? “ Denver , “ he said.

   Second story: on our recent vacation to take grandson Zachary back home, do some school shopping with him and then visit family, we found ourselves at the outlet malls in Reading , Pennsylvania . Shopping completed, grandson back in Mom’s arms, we headed back “home” to the Pittsburgh area. We turned onto Route 422 East. It was only after forty miles down the road and failing to locate where we were on the map and finally seeing a sign for Philadelphia that we realized we were going in the wrong direction.

   All Arlena and I could do was laugh. Since moving west ( Spokane and Cedar Rapids ) we always travel east to go home even if we should be going west. We relate “going home” to “going east”.  “East” for Arlena’s flightmate is “west” for us. He obviously thinks Pennsylvania is the Far East . It’s not relative, however; it’s relational.

   And so it is with life itself. Life is about how we relate both to the world in which we live and the people in this world. The closer the relationship we have with another and with one another, with our world, with our environment, with whatever, the more it becomes part of us and has meaning for us. Tip O’Neill, the former Speaker of the House and the consummate politician, once observed that all politics is local. That’s why there is no such thing as local “pork”. The environmental project slated for Coralville is pork to those back east and out west because they have no relationship with it. It is good legislation for us.

   The issues and problems that continue to plague our world and even our church are only truly understood when we have a direct relationship with them, when they become personal. The problem or issue has to hit home where we have and can have a direct relationship with it. But as long as it remains out west or back east and we are somewhere else, we will have a very difficult if not impossible time trying to relate to it.

   We will crusade for issues with which we have a close relationship. We will ignore or downplay or even totally misunderstand them if there is no such relationship. This is not to say that we have to jump on everyone’s bandwagon and get involved. It is to say that unless we are on that bandwagon, we will not fully understand or comprehend the matter at hand. We may not like someone’s fiery rhetoric or even the tactics employed to fight for or defend a position. But we can understand why s/he is the way s/he is. If we cannot, perhaps it means that we have had never such a relationship – which probably says more about us than anything else.    WJP