Connecting the dots...

I was working with a student today, discussing the fighter jets pictured in the library book he was reading. As the book was a little over his head in level, he chose instead to make up stories about them, pointing out the aircraft that belonged to the "bad guys" and those that belonged to the "good guys"- the Americans, he called them. This brought to mind a conversation I recently had with a friend about marriage and how no one teaches you all of the multitudes of facets of levels that are affected by such an institution. Suddenly, one day you just realize that there is no right and wrong.

We are so polarized in our thinking as children. If one thing is good, then the opposite of it must be bad. And that is all. There are no other options than those two, end of story. But that's the type of thing that has gotten us into trouble as adults. Last week I read an amazing story, Lay That Trumpet in Our Hands, set in the center of my home state of Florida in the 1950s (the one time period I would have been better served to have been born in). The book is a fictionalized account of actual KKK events, and, reading it, I kept thinking that it didn't feel much different from present day. Because it is the polarized thinking that the KKK fed on that runs through much of the world we now live in. Luckily, we have civil rights legislation in place now that helps prevent many of the same tragedies from taking place; but law, unfortunately, does not hold jurisdiction over level of thinking.

I asked myself why this thinking continues after a history of such blatantly heinous acts lays our ignorance bare. We may not discuss it out loud, but we can't deny it. Blacks, Jews, Arabs, gays- I'm sure most can attest to the dangers of polarized thought. So, why this thinking? Is our desire to be right so strong that it gives us reason to break the very covenants that we defend? Apparently so. So, I asked myself, why this need to be right? If fear and love are truly the only two emotions, it must surely be fear. Fear of something bad, or a fear that we ourselves are bad? Ever notice how the thing people think is bad is always what they themselves are not? No black person is against blacks. No Jew hates Jews. Perhaps determining that something "opposite" of you is innately "bad" is the guaranteed way to assure that you are right, that you are worthy. Of what, it doesn't matter.

I took this good/bad thinking one step further by examining the polarization of political parties. We have essentially organized a country of 308 million people into two clean, mutually-exclusive groups. How tidy. But only one of these parties is allowed the most powerful chair in the country at a time. Are we therefore setting ourselves up to hate? To conflict? With politics it is clear cut. With sexual orientation, it is pretty distinct. But with race? How did a world of hundreds of ethnicities get boiled down to white and non-white?

Looking too closely at a Seurat painting (you know the one from Ferris Bueller), all you'd see is a mess of individual dots of color. But when you look at it from afar, all those individual dots come together to make a beautiful picture. It may be a cheesy analogy, but I think it's a great reminder for us not to look too closely at life. We may not be able to see it, but we are all connected in a bigger, more beautiful way.


This past weekend I went parkin' in Cental Florida, the very region I had just read about. Visiting Payne's Prairie and Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings State Parks reminded me of the power of Florida. The overwhelming smell of flowers, the warmth of the March sun on your skin, the sound of the heavy wind in the tops of the trees overhead, and the Spanish moss that hangs over the water are just part of her allure that makes me proud to have grown up among her branches.