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MUIR WORDS
Labels that lead to hate…will only pain impart…
they will never bring us together…only push us further and further apart.
When we are consumed by the labels we place on one another it becomes more difficult…more bizarre to see each other clearly…to understand who we truly are.
When all we see is a person’s color, race, sex, religion…the gender they know they were born to be…the person underneath the label…we are never blessed to see.
Because the label we assign to a person…is only one piece of the puzzle…one part
and when all we see is that label…we never see inside their heart.
Through politics and prejudice our tendency to abuse these labels has gotten worse…and worse…and worse…and before it becomes more pervasive…more damaging…more perverse…
I direct your attention to a man whose philosophy was taught to him by the mountains, the rivers and the birds….
Perhaps now is the time to listen to John Muir…time to heed his words.
Words he wrote while walking with nature…which once read and thoroughly dissected have a deeper meaning for us today than, I imagine, even he expected.
“When we try to pick out anything by itself.” He wrote, “we find it hitched to everything in the universe. Simple words if heeded could help our hatred and prejudice reverse.
I wonder when he made this revelation…perhaps seated by a stream…
if the creators at the moment…didn’t share with him their dream…
How every humans, every animal, every river…every tree
are meant to live together…in balance and harmony…
How it is possible to separate ourselves by hate…how for a while some may thrive…
but in the long run how we are all connected…and how we need each other to survive.
