A Contemporary Search for Common Ground | November 8, 2026 | Rev. Hassaun Ali Jones-Bey

In characterizing the search for common ground/beloved community, Thurman said there is a paradox. He wrote:

There is something so private and personal about an act of thought that the individual may very easily seem to be a private island on a boundless human sea. To experience one’s self is to enter into a solitary world that is one’s unique possession and that can never be completely and utterly shared. Here is the paradox. A [hu]man is always threatened in his [or her] very ground by a sense of isolation, by feeling cut off from his [or her] fellows. Yet he [or she] can never separate himself [or herself] from his [or her] fellows, for mutual interdependence is characteristic of all of life.

            But the paradox is not final or ultimate:

Always he [or she] must know that the contradictions of life are not final or ultimate; he [or she] must distinguish between failure and a many-sided awareness so that he [or she] will not mistake conformity for harmony, uniformity for synthesis. He [or she] will know that for all men [or women] to be alike is the death of life in man [or woman], and yet perceive the harmony that transcends all diversities and in which diversity finds its richness and significance.

            Thurman’s search for common ground almost sounds like a forerunner today’s controversial pursuit of DEI (diversity, equity and inclusion). But there is more. Thurman searches for common ground in five different areas.

            First he searches in creation mythology of Western and indigenous Hopi myths, and finds that both stories convey a “memory of a lost harmony”—of a creation of individuals and communities in perfect harmony, and at some point a loss of that harmony.

            The second search for that harmony—in living structures—finds a dynamic universal state, a continuity of all conscious life and the consciousness of all of life. It thus in effect questions whether the harmony was ever really lost:

[hu]man’s experience of community both as a child of nature and as a kinsman of all living things…. In such a view, the notion of beginning and ending has no meaning. Life simply is.

            The third search—in the prophet’s dream—finds a self-disciplined, future, Utopian, human cityscape, a scriptural prophecy.

There seems to be an intimate connection between the view of life as seen through the symbolism of the creation myths and the dream of the future as seen through the eyes of the prophet, the seer, and the Utopian.

            The fourth search—in common consciousness—finds harmony between human and non-human life, and once again questions if the harmony was ever lost.

            The fifth search—in identity—finds nature as an extension to human families, with ancestry returning to nature. Once again it would seem to question if the harmony were ever lost…. But in this final step Thurman introduces the state attempting to become the prophet, attempting to stand in for nature and for territory. This leads to specific problems in America for Indigenous and Black people.

            Martin Luther King, Jr., is introduced as a recently assassinated hero of coming together, of a prophetic harmony. The Search for Common Ground was written in the wake of King’s assassination. Black power and the separation that came with it are introduced as perhaps naturally aggressive results of a centuries-old and perhaps now global system based on separation and inequality.

            In response, Thurman steps into the prophetic role, to close his searching in this book with a return to harmony. He dreams of children awakening to the essence of their creation mythology and calling for unity. Thurman in effect leaves the continuation of the search to each generation, as the children of this lost harmony (as if each generation loses the harmony and must find it again).

            So as a potential response from my generation, I ask, “What if everyone’s true life purpose was simply to find and express the God within? What if this was the true example left by the prophets? Is it a perfectly divine process that can be misinterpreted and misrepresented (particularly by wannabe empires), but that ultimately cannot be fooled?”

            The point here is not to attack anyone’s faith or even basis of faith. I say “What if” partially to honor Thurman’s stated wish to do no violence to any man’s faith. But I say it even more so in its greater sense of actually standing back and observing the God within evolving into expression in myself and everyone around me.

            The question is simply, looking back across millennia, is there a concept of the will of God that is separate from the empire’s will? For me the answer is not only yes. It is also stated in several different religious structures.

            For me, it’s something that the Creator placed in the creation. Words only glance off of it partially. It has to do with the portion or signature of the Creator throughout creation. It is the God within and in my case it has taken a whole life of observing, trying stuff, making big mistakes, and finally recognizing the hints of a process.

            It’s not a matter of saying, I know the answer, but simply being struck by the hint of a still ongoing process. I am approaching the end of seven and a half decades, of highly imperfect trying, and still appreciating more and even more newness.

            There is a majority of the world, of the universe, that is not, cannot, be written. Even physics says that only about 5% of the universe can be sensed by humans. The rest is “dark” matter and “dark” energy—called “dark” because we can’t “see” them. 27% is dark matter that seems to supply the extra gravity that holds everything together. 68% is dark energy that makes everything keep expanding. Maybe science will find someday that the 68% dark energy is related to the aging process in human beings. Maybe not.

            Either way, for people who know they can only see 5% of what is going on, to write something definitive about the Word of God seems silly, but what else can they do? Of course, then you would expect the accounts to be widely different from independent sightings.

            But perhaps there is something common to them all. That’s what seems to be getting brighter, for me anyway, after almost seven and a half decades. It’s not something that can be put into words, which are based upon the 5% that can be sensed and perhaps a little more.

            In the case of “world scriptures”, numerous generations passed between the life of a prophet and the recording of his words in definitive form, often by the same empire that had opposed and killed the prophet and/or the prophet’s follower’s and/or progeny. While this is often interpreted as the prophet ultimately converting the empire, alarms of concern should also flare when it comes to interpreting the “literal Word of God” that issues from empire printing presses.

            This is not to argue that the empire was not converted, but to realize that conversion as reflected in the sacred scripture can easily be interpreted on the empire’s terms just as much as (and even at times instead of) on the prophet’s terms. That said, the empire’s word of God has religious value, even if simply providing a starting point for the search. But what is often represented as the will of the anthropomorphic Creator might in many cases be the will of the empire’s leader.

            This is not to say that there was intentional bad will, or someone sneaking something in. It would actually be quite natural for this to happen, even among the most well meaning writers, editors and publishers: speaking anthropomorphically in whatever terms suit the dominant system. In fact, this is how the written word often works. It’s like Thurman, or me for that matter, using the anthropomorphic term, Creator.

            A human speaking or writing of an all-powerful God for instance is going to draw on examples of a human potentate, even though the example might show the opposite of what is being stated. For instance, a human potentate is exemplified by the power that he exerts over other humans, but there is only one God.

            So, God having “power over” means something totally different, something that cannot even be said or described in human terms. But if there is a God within every single creature, there is a meaning in each and every one to be found and expressed, conveyed.

            The process suggests very loudly and clearly that God is alive and very much in the present moment. The Creator is still in fact creating…. As Thurman says:

To be sure, life is not finished yet; creation is still going on, not only in the spinning of new worlds, systems, nebulae, and galaxies in the infinitude of space, not only in the invisible world where chemical elements are born and nourished to support conglomerates of matter yet to appear at some far-off moment in time, but also in the human body, which is still evolving, in the human mind, which so slowly loosens its corporal bonds, and in the human spirit, which forever drives us to know the truth of itself and of its fellows.

            We can see it in the majority of creation, even in the majority of humans, whose lives escape our media, who go wanting while the giants we see have too much. Are the percentages close to 95% vs. 5%. Seems so, or pretty darn close nowadays.

            About 1.5% of the world’s adults are millionaires, who control almost half of the world’s wealth. So is a large part of what is wrong with the world that the political, economic, and theological systems of empires only see the millionaires, and literally go dark on everyone else?

            By my own definition, what can I convey in these words other than a rough approximation of my own God within, as influenced of course by my encounters with the God without—as defined socially and as occurring naturally? As Thurman once put it in a live sermon:

Gee, how to say this? I can see it. Now, how to say it? Let me see if I can say it.

            Luckily for both me and you, the ideal for you as a reader is not to consider my expression of the ongoing evolution of the God within me. It is really to consider the ongoing expression of the evolution of God within you, within your community, perhaps within the communities around you. What do they look/feel like? How are they changing… right now?

            For me, it’s like realizing that the concept of God cannot fit in one mind, cannot fit in one community, cannot fit in one religion, cannot fit in one empire. It is too diverse, down to each and every individual. It is the One that is literally too great to fit into any other one.

            This is perhaps one reason why Thurman said a truly beloved community must keep expanding, not in a forced-empire or contrived-market sort of way, but in a natural, beloved, common-ground sort of way.

            This past week, in a centuries-old, colonial empire that’s still struggling to become a democracy,  a woman whose great-great grandfather had been slave-traded in the state of Georgia was elected as the first-ever, Black governor of the state of Georgia. Also, the first-ever, in the empire, female Indigenous governor was elected over the state of New Mexico. This must be one reason why Thurman said the contradictions of life cannot be final or ultimate. The struggle continues….

         Right here and right now, may we individually and collectively know and become the divinely healing wholeness, the sacred and secular oneness of each and all directions, of all space and time throughout a sacred and secular cosmos of peace and blessings—in which we continually seek and grow in knowledge and wisdom of ourselves and of each other. May we wade in the waters of healthy and beloved community ecologies. Amen, Ameen, Ashay, and Let it be.