Get Worldly -- Say Goodbye To Provincialism For A Mind-Expanding Experience

"You need to study larger maps," said Lord Salisbury to an opponent in an argument over certain policy phases of the British Empire. These are words that need to be heard by the world in each succeeding generation.

Born for the universe, we narrow our minds and give up to nations and parties what was meant for humankind. Our maps are too small. Narrow provincialisms and local loyalties blot out the recognition that there are good people elsewhere, and that all the good ideas never lie under one hat or with any one group or nation.

Recently, my wife and I returned to Seattle after a visit with our son and daughter-in-law in Concord, N.H. It was a delight to be with them, and to be in New England when the woodlands were ablaze like bonfires to welcome winter. Every roadway was a corridor of color and the historic homes and towering white church steeples lining the way reminded us that each section of our lovely land has its own peculiar beauty.

While in Concord, I remember having read a comment from one of the town's early residents. He could not believe the high prices at which lots were being sold in the newly rising city of Chicago. He remarked that he could not understand how land could bring that much "when it was so far away."

No one could begrudge any Concordian his right of pride in the names of Hawthorne, Thoreau, Emerson and other illustrious figures of the golden age of American letters. Their names glorified the

Eastern Seaboard. But the attitude indicated by his remark revealed a spirit of smug satisfaction which was perfectly willing to ignore the rest of the world.

The same trait manifests itself in diverse ways in every generation, and perhaps in every locale. During our stay on Concord, it was interesting and revealing to see that telecasts concerned themselves primarily with major cities in the East. Even weather reports rarely extended farther than the Mississippi River.

In almost any American city, people can be found whose interests are circumscribed by their particular service or study clubs. For them, those who do not belong simply do not exist. But more tragic is the same spirit of parochialism and turf protection that sometimes prevails in churches. Devotion and loyalty to one's own religious body is expected, but to limit our contacts to its membership, or to assume that our particular religious group contains all the truth, or the only truth, is arrogant, and certainly a contradiction of the basic principles of good religion.

It will be a day for celebration when not only denominations but also great religions of the world cease explaining their differences and begin a search for elements of the basic unity which could serve as building blocks for common action and world accord.

Religious exclusiveness and blind patriotism are enemies of the God who created us all. Certainly, I can know God within the confines of my own communion - but only part of God. Certainly, I can love my neighbors in my own land, but this would mean only a few of the neighbors who exist in the world.

Small maps and limited outlooks have long been an impediment to world accord, to human progress and peace. It is map-making that is engaging the attention of the Palestinians and the Israelis today. And the crucial question? Where will the boundaries of each nation lie?

A warped, provincial type of patriotism causes many to be blind to the good that is in other nations, or the possibilities for peace that arise when maps are altered. The true patriot loves his own land but rejoices in the contribution of other cultures. No other factor in history, not even religion, has produced so many wars as the clash of national egotisms sanctified by the name of patriotism.

Every time we think and act in global terms, we are fulfilling the first requirement of sanity and paving the way for peace. We are born to be citizens of the world. The tragedy of our time is that we do not know this. Even when we consider only the problems of the ecology, we appear not to know this, and nations continue to live as if it were not true.

The idea of world citizenship is going begging, but it was not always so. In the 18th century, Thomas Paine said, "My country is the world and my religion is to do good." Milton, Hugo, Tennyson and others in the centuries that followed have been eloquent in the same plea.

It is a true sentiment, and one in which we can feel that we do not love our own country less, but more. To have knowledge of other lands, other institutions, other races and other religions kindles afresh within us the instinct of a common humanity and the universal love and beneficence of the Creator of us all.