Collectively this relational decline is the most destructive trend we face. We are becoming a society of strangers and estrangement. Who would have guessed that sports — inherently competitive and partisan — would be one of the safest topics at the Thanksgiving table this year? How did we get here?
A series of wonderful societal advancements have produced unintended consequences: devalued relationships.
…General Peter Pace, addressing sectarian violence at the height of the Iraq war, said, “If the Iraqi people as a whole decided today that, in my words now, they love their children more than they hate their neighbor… this could come to a quick conclusion.” Good advice in Iraq, in facing a fiscal cliff and at Thanksgiving — because as Henri Nouwen reminds us, “community is the place where the person you least want to live with, always lives.”
Click here to read “Surviving Thanksgiving and the Relational Cliff: Can’t We All Just Get Along?” by Robert E. Hall on HuffingtonPost.com.
