Ham122996WhoIsMyNeighbor

Group: Nashville, Tennessee

Teacher: HAM

Topic: WHO IS MY NEIGHBOR

December 29, 1996

Ham: Greetings, children, I am Ham and I greet you all this evening. We are pleased with your experience with the Charlotte group, they are happy that we visited them. In the future, we will all get together again in order to help facilitate their teacher's transmissions. We are happy that you all are coming together tonight in joy and in celebration of friendship and togetherness. We are very pleased with the progress you have all endured.

Tonight, I wish to speak briefly about neighborliness. The question, who is your neighbor, now extends across great distances. People are not isolated in small community groups the way they once were and so your friendship base tends to be those who share common interests, though they be spread across wider geographic distances. Friends and neighbors are important contacts. You are no longer restricted to having neighbors who just happen to live in your communities. So the sense of neighborliness is even greater with those with whom you share common spiritual aspirations, or common professional interests. This is helping humans feel less isolated and less estranged in their communities because they are in touch with those with whom they have more to share. The communications revolution, by helping to facilitate the understanding of neighbor, will help to facilitate the dawning of the brotherhood of man as well.

So, people are members of different groups which draw different people together. The one is your physical neighborhood, where you may have nothing much in common with those near you except physical proximity. Another is professional groups, where you may be physically separated, but you are drawn together by your common work. And another is religious groups, where people are drawn together who share religious assumptions. All these groups bring you in contact with a wide variety of people. And this shared sense of neighborhood is wonderful for the freedom that it allows you and the closeness and friendliness that it facilitates.

For our purposes, we must bring to each group the same sense of love and understanding and tolerance. For every person has a story, and every person has something to teach you.

END