Opposites

I have struggled with the idea of unity in a world of polar opposites. The split between Sadducees and Pharisees, Hicksites and Orthodox... maybe there is another.

Perhaps people are divided into adversarial and adversary adverse and that these two have trouble or God forbid, can't reconcile this split.

I see people in the world who spend their lives building walls around themselves and defending these walls against all which approach in anyway. People who cannot seem to learn that everything from their past does not repeat in each new relation and event.

I could not work in American courts because I can't see life as defined by fortifications. Our adversarial courts set the conflict in stone, giving to one side this and to the other that and building a new wall. Native courts, I worked in, do the opposite, they heal, they are a product of a people who seek cooperation and healing... rather Quaker like.

But what is Quaker like? We can't seem to get the notion across to each other that our society is built on love and trust. We are not proactive is stopping adversary relations in our meetings and building a safe environment where Friends trust each other.

Maybe relationships in society are made to have built in processes of decay and death, like so much more in nature. Maybe there is something in human nature designed to bring an end to institutions, relationships, and finally humanity itself ... a built in self destruction so that some day all will be extinct. So these opposites are created by nature to destroy hope of growth, and all we are trying to do, to build a society of sustainable love - is just folly.

I just don't know anymore.