Thought for the Day

Radio Scotland
Good Morning Scotland
Thursday, June 11th, 2009

The only time I was called a baboon was when I was 14 years old and carrying on loudly with a group of friends in the street. Evidently we disturbed somebody who opened her window and yelled the insult from the safety of an upstairs room. 

 

Baboons get bad press. They are loud. They have shocking blue backsides. But, according to a news report yesterday, baboons who live in such raucous societies live longer and have healthier offspring than those who pass their years in relative isolation. Their community life – though loud and fractious – does them no harm.

In the old Creation story, God wanted a companion for Adam.

“It is not good for the man to be alone”, the text says.

Adam might have retorted that life lived in the presence of others wasn’t going to be all roses - getting along with other humans, curbing ambition in the light of other people’s needs, or lifting up the weak in a community where they could quite logically be excluded – enduring all those arguments in the wee hours of the morning where a husband and wife settle things between them – sleepless nights as parents walk the fine line between keeping their children safe and granting them the freedom and the autonomy they require.

Community is not for the faint hearted.

Our communities push us nose to nose with people who are unlike us - our extended families, our colleagues at work, our membership in local organizations or in our church congregations.

When we are grownups we get to say ‘yes’ or ‘no’ to such involvement.

But we have an impulse to nurture and to be nurtured. Our sense of adventure is best satisfied by being shoulder to shoulder with people who are unlike us and who make demands on us. When this happens we grow larger and more flexible. We get stretched.

Sure, we can’t lay first claim to every piece of fruit on the tree. But all the compromises and conversations will have left us a legacy – a community – a place in the midst of others.

Well worth the risks.