Diversity

Some thoughts on diversity. Any effort to erase diversity rather than embrace it will inevitably erase the most valuable asset we have as a people (meaning human beings). Unity comes through embracing and celebrating each other’s differences and recognizing that it’s precisely our diversity that provides the opportunity for us to develop empathy, love, and unity.

Until we are able to value each other’s diversity, our world view remains unavoidably narrow. To use the over-used analogy of the elephant, the world will continue to be only a trunk and it will be impossible for us to discover a more complete picture that involves legs, body, ears, and tail. We can only discover those through other people who have experienced those aspects of life.

Diversity and oneness are not mutually exclusive priorities. I’d say that our diversity of experience is the prerequisite to coming to oneness. Through embracing our collective diversity and making it a constant effort to learn what each other has learned through unique experiences, and to hear of each other’s struggles, and to mourn with each other, and to lift each other up, only in this way can we become one with each other.

Drawing from my own faith tradition, I keep thinking of what Paul wrote about all of us being parts of the body of Christ. And no one part is more crucial than the other. We are only complete when we are together. Apart, we can never be complete. No one person possesses all that’s necessary to be made whole and complete. We’re entirely dependent on each other.

We have to let every person, in every walk of life, have their voice. We need to sit at their feet and listen and understand. Only then are we ready to start on the long haul toward eventual oneness.