For whatever reason I haven't written for almost a year. It has been a very full year. I have been thinking a lot lately about things going on in the world. Poverty, war, greed, discrimination, genocide, and apathy. I have decided that all these things have one thing in common at their center. We are US and they are THEM. Regardless of who is considered US or THEM.
As human beings it is more convenient to separate ourselves from others that we don't understand or with whom we feel uncomfortable being in the same room. This is even easier when those people look different, sound different, or live differently than us. Easier if we can say "that would never be me." That we are worthy of love and compassion but they are not, because they are not us. We don't want what we consider to be bad to look like us. That opens the possibility that we also have the same thread in our fabric. That we too are infallible, and imperfect, and not in control of our lives.
But for the grace of God, there go I.
I have noticed as well, that when we decide that we all are in this together. Regardless of what name we call God, what shade our skin, or what dialect we use to tell our families that we love them. That we begin to have a little more compassion. A little more empathy. A little more forgiveness. We reach out with an open hand instead of lashing out with a fist. We choose to make the world better instead of protecting just our corner of it. We see every other human being as simply a brother, a sister, a son, a daughter, a father, or a mother. We understand that it could just as easily in different circumstances be us on the other side of the evening news. We know that a mother's sorrow is universal. And we try each day to do what we can to make the lives we touch better than we found them.
Because we are all US, and we are all THEM.
