27. The Beauty of Unity

A meditation of psalm 133

Psalm 133 is a song of ascent, a song that the pilgrims used to sing while climbing the mount of Zion on their way to the temple of Jerusalem. Although it is one of the smallest of all the psalms, its theme is among the grandest in the Bible. 

The people of a nation living together united as a family is certainly a good and pleasing sight. It smells like the sweet-scented oil used to anoint the high-priests of Israel. When there is unity, they receive showers of blessings from God just as a dry mount receives dew from the sky.     

The history of Israel, just like that of any other people, is a history of the struggle to live together in peace. The history of the entire human race may be considered as a struggle to live together in peace. Our discord with God, the ground and source of our being, our discord with nature, which is our own body, and our discord among ourselves are the three sides of our disintegrated existence. We have had global wars that consumed the lives of millions of our fellow beings. We keep on spending a good part of the fruit of our toil for amassing more and more weapons in order to exterminate ourselves. Our warships are roaming around in the oceans, our warplanes are flying in the air above us, and we fill even the space with our war-spaceships.

We shamelessly keep on inventing reasons to exterminate our own fellow beings. We emphasize the differences among ourselves and ignore our similarities. We make a mount of a mole, and a mole of a mount. We ignore the facts that we all are members of the human family, that we all share the same planet, that we all breathe the same air and drink the same water, and that we all are Homo Sapiens. We murder our brothers and sisters in the name of the color of the skin, but we don’t realize that underneath the skin we all have the same red blood. We keep our fellow beings away in the name of class difference, but we don’t realize that it is simply a difference based on the wealth that comes and goes. We fight with our fellow humans in the name of our creeds, but we don’t realize that our creeds are nothing but our beliefs and opinions that come and go.

How to live together in peace may be considered the primary theme of the Bible and of every other Holy Scriptures of humankind. The Bible begins with the Garden of Eden where life is fully integrated, and it ends with Revelation, which closes with a vision of the new heaven and new earth where life is fully integrated once again. Discord occurs in the Garden of Eden itself. Humans break an agreement with the almighty, and they refuse to apologize for their mistake. This results in a totally disintegrated world. Prophets spoke of a good future when there will be total integration when people will change their swords to plowshares.

They will beat their swords into plowshares
and their spears into pruning hooks.
Nation will not take up sword against nation,
nor will they train for war anymore. Isaiah 2:4

Sword represents all the tools and means for destruction, and plowshares represent all the constructive and creative tools. Even after about twenty-five centuries, this prophecy remains unfulfilled. The world is still separated as nations, and they all pile up weapons of mass destruction against one another.

Jesus enters the disintegrated world with the good news of integration. Jesus presented the world as a family with God as the father who loves us unconditionally. Like the prodigal son, we, the humanity, need to clear our misunderstandings of God, return to Him, and reconcile with Him. Once we reconcile with God, we can also reconcile with our fellow beings. St. Paul proclaimed that Jesus demolished the wall of separation, and that there is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, for all are one in Christ Jesus. We need to be quick to apologize for our mistakes, and even quicker to forgive the mistakes of others. Jesus taught us to pray: “Forgive us as we forgive others”. 

Unity is beautiful; disunity is ugly. Unity is sweet-scented; disunity stinks. Unity is pleasing; disunity is repulsive. Unity is melodious; disunity is discordant. Unity is delicious; disunity is bitter. Behold how good and how pleasant it is for people to live together in unity!

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