Soapbox

Greenhouse

    We build walls around our certainty to protect our special sense of place, to guard against things that might threaten it- things like compassion, a recognition of common bonds and larger truths. Common bonds break down walls, and ours walls are what lets everyone know that we are special.
   We celebrate our small variations of color, language, cultural standards, shelter the perception of our vital uniqueness because too often we find our validation in superiority rather than in commonality.

    Like a rare and precious orchid we give our rituals sanctuary behind the hothouse glass of exclusion lest we be damaged by the cold, harsh winds of “other”, tainted by the mongrel of “them”.

    But the things we let divide us are not rare and exotic or worthy of protection. Intolerance and xenophobia are common as crabgrass,
as smothering  as kudzu, as toxic as poison ivy. They are parasitic, strangler vines that envelope the community, robbing it of life and light, choking off the ability to work for the common good, blocking our view of the future.
    When we put ourselves behind the glass walls of tradition and segregation, we exile ourselves from the universal constants of the quest for purpose: the need for  affection, a child’s smile, the very beating heart of life.