"You are loved . . . and so are they!"

Happy Turkey Day, gentle audience!

My mom recently read me a book that was titled "Old Turtle and the Broken Truth". Did you ever see the Old Turtle books? They were my favorite when I was a child, probably more for their beautiful watercolors than for their message, but this one struck me hard. It's about a magic "truth" that falls to the earth, but it breaks on the way, and eventually humans find a piece of it that bears the inscription "You are loved". They begin to treasure it and worship it and it gives them comfort. It leads to problems, though, and the humans create turmoil among themselves, so much so that a young girl seeks out the oldest and wisest animal, Old Turtle, to ask what they can do. He says that until the humans can look at their neighbors and see themselves, they will be discontent, and he gives her a beautiful gift that he charges her to take back to her village. She does, but when she tries to tell her neighbors his message, they mock her and don't believe her. A crow flies up, takes the gift, the other part of the truth, from her hands, and flies it up to where the broken truth lies, so that the whole truth can finally be seen: "You are loved, and so are they."

I look around at the happenings of the world and I am frightened by what I see. We're surrounded by messages of hate and self-righteousness and we're made to believe that they are admirable qualities. And the worst thing is that I examine myself and I've bought into them sometimes. Everywhere I turn, these messages are shouted from the rooftops. Republicans and Democrats are too busy arguing with and blaming each other for our present situation and pointing out faults that they forget that we are ultimately one nation. They don't seem to realize that they are simply dividing a country at the worst possible time we could be divided. Homosexuals are beaten up in school and have hateful words spray painted on their lockers and are denied basic human rights based on religious principles in a country that has the separation of church and state clearly defined in it's constitution. You have to wonder how the persecutors could seem to forget that gays are human beings, too, and have thoughts and feelings and loves and lives with just as much right to "Life, love, and the pursuit of happiness" as they do. Idina Menzel and Taye Diggs get hate mail because she's white and he's black and they decided to fall in love and get married. Liberals and the media blame all our problems on our choice of President, when it is completely impractical and irrational to think that the problems we are in can stem from one, albeit one powerful, person in government. And what about the media? The media is swift to point fingers at all the bad things in the world and say "Look at this, this defines our nation, this is our world" because those messages sell, but they fail to point out all the good things that do exist and sometimes prevail in our world!
**Deep breath!*

Before I wax too terribly political, I'll get to the point: Where has that broken truth gone to and how can we repair it? "You are loved . . . and so are they." "You are loved . . .AND SO ARE THEY." What has happened to the last and most important part of that truth? Regardless of your belief system, this hits home. We're all created equal, we all come into the world the same messy way, we all are equal. However, as a Christian myself, what that truth means to me is that we all come into this world as God's greatest hope for the future. Christians are supposed to follow Christ's example, and didn't Christ love everyone, from lepers to prostitutes to the rich to the people who prosecuted him? He loved everyone and everything because he saw everyone and everything as his brothers and sisters in God's love. It really irks me, the things that people believe and do in the name of religion, any religion, non-religion, anti-religion, and what bothers me even more is that I'm not completely immune to those beliefs. I find myself buying into these messages of hate and self-righteousness. What has happened to the truth? Is it broken forever? Will we ever find the other half and join them together to start making a world where blacks and whites and homosexuals and straights and Democrats and Republicans and Americans and Iraqis and mothers-in-law and their daughters-in-law can look at each other and finally see . . . a little bit of themselves? I'm not sure.

Gentle audience, please forgive me for my very long rant. I'll leave you with a quote from my favorite movie (and literary) hero, Gregory Peck as Atticus Finch in "To Kill a Mockingbird". I think it went something like this:
"You can never understand another person until you put on their shoes and walk around for a while."
I guess all we can do is wear as many people shoes that we can every day, and even if they're uncomfortable or too small or too wide or the wrong color, maybe we can learn to respect and appreciate them, not despite of their differences, but because of them. Then maybe, just maybe, we'll repair that truth.