Common denominator

I can be a judgmental person at times. Mostly it's the kind of judgment that gets passed in the first few seconds of seeing someone--he's heavy, she doesn't look too bright, etc. Most of the time these kinds of thoughts are caught and identified as the unfair, hurtful preconceptions that they are. What follows is usually a course correction for my thoughts that often seeks some point of common ground between us, a point of identification. Last week, I had a minor epiphany about how that is done.

As a Christian, we are often encouraged to find common ground in our shared sinfulness, brokenness, and neediness (of salvation). But identifying with others on these grounds can be defeating, both to them and to oneself. Neither the other nor I is lifted up; instead we are both brought down. Spong, towards the end of his latest book Jesus for the Nonreligious, speaks in no uncertain terms about how degrading and dehumanizing such a focus can be.

At the end of our yoga classes we depart by bowing and parting with the word namaste, which means:

I honor the place in you where the entire universe resides,
I honor the place in you of love, of light, of truth, of peace.
I honor the place within you where if you are in that place in you
and I am in that place in me, there is only one of us.