This Little Light

This is what kept me up last night.

With all the things that have been in the news lately I have been noticing a trend. It seems that there is such a great underlying of mistrust and fear of differentness.  Divisive politics with social programs, class warfare, right and left wing squabbling, race relations, the recent tragedy of the Zimmerman verdict polarizing people along racial lines, but there have also been some good things too, such as legalizing same sex marriage in Washington State, but this also polarized points of view. Has there been an escalation? Are these growing pains? I hope we are moving in the right direction.

I don't understand how we can have so much fear, and even hate and violence toward our brothers and sisters. Why do we need to litigate laws to deprive others of their rights? Why do we act out with violence and hate speech? It seems so simple to me, to accept our differences, it is what makes us all beautiful. The one thing that makes us all the same is our humanness. Our desire for love, acceptance, respect, and freedom. 

Is it intrinsic to our nature to distrust and fear differentness? How did we get here? How can we stop teaching fear? Someone recently said to me something their father always said to them “different is not wrong it’s just different.” Why can't we all accept and even embrace this?

I know no one is immune to prejudice, I know I have those negative messages go through my head, but I try to let them pass through, recognize them as what they are, and try to change my thought processes for the next time. We are all fallible but we don't’ have to let that rule us.

I sincerely hope we can grow as a society to love, respect and cherish our neighbors, black, white, gay, straight, right or left, male, female, young, old and everything in-between.  I know it sounds cliché but this is what I hope our reality could become. 

As the children’s Gospel song says, “This little light of mine I’m gonna let it shine”  We all have a light.