Sunday Sunshine: Build a Bridge, Be a Bridge

While hiking in a verdant, natural area, we suddenly encountered a bright yellow sign emblazoned with the word "bridge" in bold, black capital letters.

Surely, the sign informed hikers and cross-country skiers of an upcoming bridge, but the sign also made me think about the ways we can be bridges, too.

When we choose to be a bridge of love and understanding, we create a safe place for respectful conversation. We serve as a sign to others of a safe crossing for differing ideas and perspectives. We invite others who may think, speak or live differently than we do to be our teachers. We encourage the expansion of our own knowledge and understanding.

Choose to listen with an open mind and heart and invite others to respectfully share their thoughts, their perspectives, their experiences and their talents. Soon the chasms of misunderstanding and fear will be gone. In their place, we will find bridges forming in all directions.

Today, this week: Listen with an open mind and heart. Build bridges of love, respect and understanding. 

Bridges and Walls

Our church's lay speaker gave the sermon a few Sundays ago, a message that has continued to resonate with me these many weeks.  He spoke about bridges and walls.  Afterward, I thought of the many times in my life I've attempted to build walls around me, thinking that I would be safe, free from hurt, free from risk, if only I constructed a wall that was strong enough and high enough to be impenetrable. As I've gotten older, however, I realize that building a wall is a rather fruitless effort. One can never be free from hurt or risk. In fact, in building a wall, one runs the greater risk of avoiding love, fun, adventure and reward. A far better exercise is to build a bridge. Bridges allow one to reach out to another, meet new friends, develop new understandings, cultivate new interests, and perhaps even surprise oneself with the things one can learn, especially about oneself.  That very evening after our lay speaker's sermon, I heard Simon & Garfunkel's "Bridge Over Troubled Water" and there the concept of bridge building became even more real for me. As Paul Simon wrote in the lyrics to that 1960s hit, we can all be bridges for others' troubled waters, to help lift another up who may be feeling down, in pain or alone. My message to myself these days is to tear down any walls I perceive around me and to, instead, become a bridge. That may be my most rewarding construction yet.