II.

Solidarity at home:

Some persons felt that our families exist to provide safety and security for persons in the home. Others
alluded to goals of parental nurturance, spiritual growth and personal development. However, the
answer I was most impressed with was that our families' primary purpose is to point to God and bring
praise to him through our godly examples.

It doesn't take us looking to far to observe the tragic reality that the traditional family is under full
frontal attack in America with many powerful evil forces vying against it. Even within the church we
often struggle to keep our families together and on track. The question I am seeking to answer in today's
column is as follows: How can we go about building (or restoring) family unity and making our families
stronger? I believe that there are at least five important keys to consider, each of which begins with the
letter "C."

The first essential key to developing family unity is commitment. It seems these days that marriages and
families are frequently viewed as temporary — even throwaway — conveniences. There's little to no
loyalty. Selfishness and self-centeredness can easily get in the way of harmony and happiness in the
home. Whether we're a spouse, parent, child, sibling or all of the above, we need to think long and hard
about how committed we are to our families' basic physical, emotional and spiritual well-being. What
level of sacrifice are we willing to make for the health and wholeness of our family units? Family ought
to walk in when the world walks out on us.

Second is the all-important characteristic of compassion. Why is it that we often tend to hurt the ones
we should love the most through our unkind words, pettiness, envy, angry outbursts and bitterness
toward each other? To demonstrate compassion in the home means to develop a genuinely caring and
considerate heart — one that sympathizes and empathizes with the various struggles, fears and
difficulties we each possess. And it is more than just something we feel; it's what we do. We must
demonstrate mercy and kindness to one another, being patient, understanding and forgiving.

Third is the concept of communication. To communicate effectively necessitates more listening than
talking, more concentration than jumping to hasty conclusions, more clarification than condemnation.
We must take down our defenses and open our ears and minds so we can take in what our family
members are trying to get across to us. Listen with your heart and speak with honesty and humility.
Reflect back to the other person what you have grasped from their words to give them the opportunity
to clarify any misconceptions.
Fourth comes compromise. I'm not talking about compromising the truth or our moral values in any
way. What I mean is that everything — within reason — should be open to negotiation in our families. A
healthy family will be characterized by give and take. Certain spouses seem to adhere to the idea that
"It's my way or the highway!" Some parents are like cantankerous ogres who never consider their
children's legitimate wishes and desires. On the other hand, some children act like spoiled brats who
operate with a sense of personal entitlement for whatever they want at whatever cost to their parents.
We've got to strike a balance in our families so that wisdom and fairness prevails in the end.

Finally, and most importantly in our attempt to foster peace and unity within our families, there must be
Christ. Jesus should be the very cornerstone of our family life, and our homes need to be built upon him
as our firm foundation. Our ultimate purpose in our families ought to be to bring glory to God. Psalm
127:1 states, "Unless the LORD builds the house, those who build it labor in vain."

Ref: https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.jacksonsun.com/amp/12864711

Solidarity at workplace:

Team-building requires deliberate efforts to improve communications and coordinate actions.

Four generations -- each with its own concerns and motivations -- share today's workplace:
Traditionalists, Baby Boomers, Generation Xers and the Millennials, explains business consultant Cam
Marston, author of "Generational Insights." Although each group has slightly different values, all of them
expect to work together toward common goals. Managers who communicate clear expectations,
enforce performance standards and deal proactively with potential conflicts create the workplace unity
needed for maximum productivity, according to financial adviser Dave Ramsey.

Communication

A message means nothing until the receiver demonstrates that he understands and intends to act upon
the information, says Donald Clark, a leadership trainer in Edmonds, Washington. Your job is to send the
message, and how you transmit your message matters.

Mature workers (those born before 1945) prefer to receive fewer dictates and more requests for advice
and guidance. This demonstrates that the manager respects experience and trusts the mature worker's
judgement. Boomers (born between 1945 and 1964) value their positions as team players and prefer
short communications explaining how they can help the team. Workers in Generation X (born between
1965 and 1979) want communication limited to short bursts of information that explain why something
needs to be done, while Millennials want immediate and frequent feedback about their progress toward
the manager's expectations, and advice on how to accomplish it all.
Gossip

Gossip is poor communication's offspring. When frequent, clear communication does not occur, gossip
will take its place. Gossip is essentially discussing concerns with people who have no authority to change
the situation, according to Ramsey. When employees act on gossip instead of on official
communications, myths take root and become unofficial policy. Such misunderstandings erode trust and
lower morale, and bullying replaces mentoring.

Even if a team in one department works well together, it may have difficulty working with teams in
other departments, according to the New Zealand Herald. Symptoms of this "silo mentality" include
accounting departments refusing to release funding for a project in progress, or late submission of
reports due to missing information that was supposed to come from another department. Top
performing companies owe their success to a shared vision across and between departments, according
to The JRA Best Workplaces Survey, conducted in 2010 by the New Zealand Department of Labour.

Negativity

When gossip, complaints and grumbling take over, collaboration grinds to a halt -- and generational
differences can play a big part in such a breakdown. Boomers prefer optimistic language and a focus on
the positive, viewing Generation X workers' questions as disrespect of authority instead of requests for
information. Mature workers often grumble when they feel disrespected and shunted aside, while
Millennials are most likely to complain about long hours and disrupted schedules. All of these result
when managers fail to enforce performance expectations regarding gossip and collaboration.

Reward teams that make the best use of each member's strengths. Assign a mentor to each team from
the beginning to provide mature workers with an opportunity to demonstrate their experience. Make it
clear that questions

should be regarded as exactly what they are: requests for clarification. Do not tolerate employees who
engage in pointless power struggles. To prevent disrupted schedules, ensure that each team
understands that refusal to pass completed portions of a task to the next team will not be tolerate.

Ref: https://smallbusiness.chron.com/affects-unity-workplace-35521.html

Solidarity in the society:

Society is like a company of pedestrians going on a pilgrimage. Suppose one among them is attacked by
cholera, do the rest go on their way, leaving him behind? No, they cannot. Rather, they break their
journey at the place for a day or two. Relieve him from the disease and help him to acquire strength in
his legs. Or, they start out anew, carrying him on their shoulders. If anyone runs short of his subsistence,
others give him their own. Together, they stream ahead, singing their leading chorus. In their eagerness
to go ahead with others, they forget their trifling differences which in their families might have led to
negative exchanges and court cases, even down to three generations.

The essence of cooperation born of moving together, aims at widening or expanding the mental being of
a person by striking down one’s barriers of meanness again and again. And hence, I reiterate that society
is like such a batch of pilgrims gathering a strange power of mind in traveling together and with its help,
solving all the problems of their individual and social life.

Lack of unity among the members of society, because of too much self-interest in the individual
members, formation of sects for economic or social advantages, lack of understanding of others, not
only brings the downfall of society, but also will wipe it completely from the face of the earth. Instances
of so many sects and empires disappearing altogether are not rare in the history of this xworld.

Ref: https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.speakingtree.in/blog/society-and-social-unity/m-lite

Why do we have differences? Where are all these differences come from?

It only comes from our own perception.

How to overcome differences to attain soalidarity?

“Unity in Diversity.” This expression speaks about a balance between wholeness and difference,
between integrity and variety. The idea is sometimes rooted in our teaching about the Holy Trinity: God
is a unity, one God, in a diversity of persons, Father Son and Holy Spirit. Unity in diversity can also
suggest something very important to us, as human beings, but specifically as Orthodox Christians.
Because it can illustrate that things or people don’t have to look, walk, talk, and think exactly alike in
order to be in union with each other.

Not all differences can be held together. Some differences between us really do divide us. Thinking
about Orthodoxy, if someone were to say that Jesus Christ is not divine, or that he’s not human, that
person would be at odds with the Orthodox Christian faith, and therefore divided from it. But not all
differences divide. In fact, some differences make for an even deeper unity.

This sounds surprising, but anyone in a reasonably healthy marriage knows this instinctively: two people
don’t have to become identical to each other in order to be in union with each other. In fact, it is often
precisely the differences that make their union not only more interesting, but also more real, more
substantial. We don’t, as a rule, marry mirror-images of ourselves.
Unity and diversity play themselves out within any human society, grouping, or family. And they have
long been applied to the unity and diversity that characterize the Church. St Paul gives us the image of
the Church as a body, with members that are different and interdependent (see especially 1 Cor. 12).
From its apostolic beginnings, then, the Church has always been thought of as a community of diverse
members with diverse gifts, and the diversity of the saints continues to testify to how differently the
same Christian faith and life may be expressed in this world.

The Church’s diversity-in-unity was also articulated in a striking way in the second century. In the midst
of a heated crisis in the Church concerning the date on which Easter should be celebrated, St Irenaeus of
Lyons considered the various practices and dates and said: “The difference in practice confirms the unity
in faith”. Yes, you read that correctly. The differences confirm the unity. They testify to it. They
strengthen it. This pronouncement challenges our logic: wouldn’t you have thought that it’s unity in
practice that confirms unity in faith? Well that can happen too. But what is being said here is also true,
and deeply important: the very fact that we can embody diversity, yet agree in the matters of the
greatest significance, confirms and deepens our unity. It means that our unity doesn’t depend on our
being identical, or completely undifferentiated. In short, unity is not uniformity.

St Irenaeus’s saying confirms the principle of “unity in diversity,” or perhaps “diversity in unity.” Unity in
the most important sense, unity concerning the things that really matter, is not threatened but enriched
by diversity. Fr St Irenaeus, the different dates of the Paschal celebration did not threaten but even
enriched what really mattered, namely the fact and the life-giving content of the Lord’s Pascha itself.

"SOLIDarity over SOLOdarity"

Ref: https://www.svots.edu/voices/faculty/speaking-truth-love