English grammar has three sets of personal pronouns.
First person: I, me, and mine.
Second person: You and yours.
Third person: He, she, and it; him, her; his, hers, and its. (No, not “it’s” -- that’s a contraction of “it is”.)
A century or so ago, German theologian Martin Buber applied those pronouns to human relations. We treat other people either as an “it” or as a “you,” he said.
Treating them as an “it” turns them into an object. The cashier at the supermarket, the kid who delivers your newspaper, the flagperson directing traffic around a construction site -- we don’t see them as human beings. We don’t care if they have interesting lives. We don’t expect them to become friends. They’re just “things” that we encounter as we go about our daily lives.
The ultimate “it” treats people as slaves, expendable cogs in a machine.
Better, Buber suggested, if we treated people as “you” -- or, in his terminology, as “thou.” If we acknowledged that those other persons were just as much human beings as we are. With just as much right to be recognized as individuals with likes and dislikes, passions and pains.
That doesn’t mean every person we meet has to become part of our family. It might just mean acknowledging that flagperson standing in the rain with smile and a wave. Recognizing the cashier’s face. Discovering that the paper kid has a name.
It’s a way -- to use a biblical illustration -- of learning to love your neighbour as yourself. Of treating others as you would like to be treated.

First person plural
But with all respect to Martin Buber, I think he missed a further step. He stopped at singular pronouns. We also have plural pronouns -- we, you, and they.
The same level of association applies. “They” implies an impersonal relationship -- “they” keep raising our taxes, driving while drunk, digging up roads, and voting for Donald Trump. “You” is more personal, more direct -- “you” went to war, belong to another faith, got us into this mess.
But what about “we”?
Philosopher and futurist Ken Wilber postulates that all of us develop a sense of our individual identity -- “I”. But we also yearn to belong to something bigger, to transcend our smallness, to become “we”. Buber’s “I-thou” relationship may be closer, warmer, than “I-it” but it still leaves us as two separate identities like (to use a tired metaphor) ships that pass in the night.
An “I-I” relationship would be ultimate egotism, the realm of narcissists and psychopaths, the conviction that only I matter.
But we could seek “I-we” relationships.
That is, in fact, what most of us hope to do when we get married. We hope, we believe, that two can become one.
For the same reason, we ally ourselves to causes: civil rights, religion, politics, ecology…. We remain individuals, but we immerse ourselves in the larger body. Many people find their most memorable experiences in being part of a sports team, a military unit, a protest movement, in which the many became one.
I suggest that “I-we” is also the goal of prayer. Not to beg favours from a distant deity. Rather, to become one with God, so that God’s will, God’s goals, become ours.
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Copyright © 2016 by Jim Taylor. Non-profit use in congregations and study groups, and links from other blogs, welcomed; all other rights reserved.
        To comment on this column, write jimt@quixotic.ca
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YOUR TURN

The first two letters I received after last week’s column weren’t about the column at all. Hugh Pett and  Nenke Jongkind both told me that I had failed to tell you which psalm I had paraphrased. 
Okay, for the record, it was Psalm 77. 

I had  two more responses to the previous week’s column, on the benefits of singing. Christine Way Skinner wrote, “We decided to use your article as the fodder for our discussion at our Monday Tea and Theology meeting. We all ended up singing our favourite songs for the last half hour of the class. It was fun and brilliant and we have decided to have our last and final meeting of the year be a singsong of all of our favourite church hymns! Thanks for the inspiration.”

Doreen Beaton shared some unhappy memories, about how some kinds of music teaching can paralyze a person’s musical talent for life: “In my public school days in the 1940’s, each school had a choir entered in the ‘May Festival’ One of the teachers would go room by room lining us all up against the blackboards to sing some song. As we sang, she walked along in front of us, listening to our cherubic voices, and tapping the chosen ones on their shoulders. After the first tour she would ask all those tapped, the best singers, to step out. This was repeated three times. 
“My friend, Gloria, was always chosen for the third group, and I knew she sang off key. I was in the small group of rejects left standing by the board. I decided that if my singing was worse than Gloria’s I must have a terrible voice, and my throat would close up as the teacher walked by. It did not occur to me that she might not choose me because she heard nothing. 
“One day in Grade Three the same teacher sang out our names and we were to answer in the same tune. I was terrified and prayed she would forget my name. When she sweetly sang, ‘Where is Doreen?’ with clogged throat I croaked, ‘Doreen is here!’ whereupon the whole class laughed their loudest. That is when I began what is now called ‘lip syncing’ -- even in the junior choir at church, which my mother insisted I join, as all the ‘good kids’ were members. It was difficult to lip sync the prolonged ‘Glo, o o o o o, o o o o orias’ at the Christmas concerts!”

Isabel Gibson was the only reader to respond specifically to the content of last week’s column. “Living longer by volunteering?” she commented. “I'll defer to the researchers to have controlled for the obvious variables. Living BETTER by volunteering? Yeah, that seems right.”

PSALM PARAPHRASES

Psalm 30 comes up several times in the lectionary cycle. This version seems appropriate, when I write (above) about Amanda Lindhout rising above her torture and mistreatment. 

I know what it's like to be down and out; 
I know all about doubt and depression. 
5   But these things are like a cloud passing over the sun; 
they pale into distant memory when the sun comes out. 

6   When things were going well, I took all the credit. 
I said, "I did it myself. I am a success!"
7   When things went wrong, I fell apart. 
I blamed myself for my failure.
8   I blamed God for punishing me. 
I feared my misery might last forever. 
I asked God, "Does it make you feel good to make me feel bad?
9   Would you rather have me praise you or curse you? 
Who else will people listen to -- the dust or the wind? 
10   Give me another chance!"

11   It worked! 
I started feeling better. 
I looked for the goodness around me, instead of the harm; 
I quit moping and started dancing. 
12   Now I know I owe my good fortune to God, 
And I thank God every chance I get. 

For paraphrases of most of the psalms used by the Revised Common Lectionary, you can order my book Everyday Psalms from Wood Lake Publishing, info@woodlake.com.

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YOU SCRATCH MY BACK…
Ralph Milton has a new project, called Sing Hallelujah – the world’s first video hymnal. It consists of 100 popular hymns, both new and old, on five DVDs that can be played using a standard DVD player and TV screen, for use in congregations who lack skilled musicians to play piano or organ. More details at www.singhallelujah.ca
Isabel Gibson's thoughtful and well-written blog, www.traditionaliconoclast.com
Wayne Irwin's "Churchweb Canada," an inexpensive service for any congregation wanting to develop a web presence, with free consultation. <http://www.churchwebcanada.ca>
Alva Wood's satiric stories about incompetent bureaucrats and prejudiced attitudes in a small town are not particularly religious, but they are fun; write alvawood@gmail.com to get onto her mailing list.
Tom Watson writes a weekly blog called “The View from Grandpa Tom’s Balcony” – ruminations on various subjects, and feedback from Tom’s readers. Write him at twatson@sentex.net

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TECHNICAL STUFF

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