prayer and solidarity

I was in charge of facilitating our monthly staff meeting today, and I shared the following quote as part of our opening reflection. Many times we might think of standing in solidarity with others as involving our external behavior (and it certainly does), but what is the spiritual or moral basis of such solidarity? Henri Nouwen suggests it is nothing less than our common standing as beings made in the image of God--and that it is only as we recognize that our own value comes from WHO we are (not our wordly credentials or what we can produce) that we will be able to rightly relate to others with true solidarity and compassion.

“One of the discoveries we make in prayer is that the closer we come to God, the closer we come to all our brothers and sisters in the human family. God is not a private God. The God who dwells in our inner sanctuary is also the God who dwells in the inner sanctuary of each human being. As we recognize God’s presence in our own hearts, we can also recognize that presence in the hearts of others, because the God who has chosen us as a dwelling place gives us the eyes to see the God who dwells in others. When we see only demons within ourselves, we can see only demons in others, but when we see God within ourselves, we can see God also in others.

We often wonder what we can do for others, especially for those in greatest need. It is not a sign of powerlessness to say, “We must pray for one another.” To pray for one another is, first of all, to acknowledge, in the presence of God, that we belong to each other as children of the same God. Without this acknowledgement of human solidarity, what we do for one another does not flow from who we truly are. We are brothers and sisters, not competitors or rivals.

To pray, then, is to listen to the voice of the One who calls us “the beloved”, is to learn that voice excludes no one. Where I dwell, God dwells with me and where God dwells with me I find all my sisters and brothers. And so intimacy with God and solidarity with all people are two aspects of living in the present moment that can never be separated.” –Henri Nouwen