Sermon at the First Gathering:

My friends, listen to me. We are always surprised when we meet one another, when we say something and find ourselves understood, because from our earliest days we were taught that we are no different from the others, that no person is better than any other. But we are not the same as others, we are different from most of the people we meet, for they do not understand what we say, even though they say that they do, and it is clear that they believe what they say. Each of us has spent most of his life alone among such people, and we adopt strategies for coping with this discrepancy between what we understand and what the others plainly do not.

One of these strategies is to say to ourselves that we must be missing something, and to try to figure out what it is that we do not see that is causing misunderstanding. Another gambit is to try to explain ourselves, in the hope that we can help the others to see not what we see, but what is there; and when they become offended by what they call our condescending tone we think that perhaps the explanation was not cogent enough, or perhaps revert to the first strategy of thinking that we are missing something. A third strategy is to assume that we must be wrong, since everyone else disagrees, despite that our hearts and minds tell us we are right; this strategy is the most harmful, for eventually we lose our courage, the spirit breaks, and misery and despair follow.

Then one day we meet one who does understand, and we are staggered. We recognize each other, and love one another on the instant, and bind ourselves to one another forever; but beyond that we do not know what to do. For the world is in the power of the others, and this new confirmation of our vision and understanding is dangerous, for the others hate those different from themselves, when once they have identified them, and their hatred and wrath is terrible.

But our power is not the power of force, which is their power; our knowledge is not the knowledge of indoctrination, which is their knowledge, it is the wisdom of experience; our understanding is not the cunning of the predator, which is their understanding, it is the vision of the seer.

They are jealous and spiteful, we are generous and kind; they are vanglorious and selfish, we are modest and compassionate; they are wrong, we are right. They own the world, we are the bearers of life.

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