Cultivating Our Garden Community

The partisan and racial divisiveness buttressed by Obama's brilliant speech yesterday is in evidence in the world outside us. Not just here in the blogsophere, because we are but one segment of the general population, and though we ought to have a sense of common purpose here, how quickly we become distracted by this when human conduct and fallacy gets in the way.

Yesterday, following Senator Obama's advice, I made a strategic decision out of bold courage and fearlessness. I deliberately stood next to a black man holding his five-year-old daughter in his arms. I was in the grocery line and it was seven o'clock in the evening. The store was packed with people of all races, but most of those patrons were white.

So I dared stand and hold my head up high. So I dared to be comfortable around a black man when my actions made me the suspicion of both blacks, whites, and latinos who were there as customers and as workers. And I was not afraid. I saw their misunderstanding eyes on me and I was not afraid.

The suspicious eyes of many in the store looked as me, as if to say, "What are you trying to prove, kid?"

I felt the prejudice of ignorance, but I also understood tacit understanding from some, particularly the woman who pulled her cart behind me, and smiled with the joke I cracked with the cashier. So with my groceries in hand, a smile on my face, and a light in my step, I left that store knowing that some had understood me, some had misunderstood me, and the older white couple, roughly my grandparents' age, who gaped at me for my boldness, may or may not have understood my intentions of the fullest intent of them.

As some have said here online, we are a reflection in our daily lives if we support Barack Obama or any other candidate. If we are spiritual people, we are a reflection of our own spiritual, religious, or social group. This gives us an enormous responsibility to the community we live in beyond our workplace, beyond our home, beyond the grocery store, and to the greater world outside, wherever we go.

Wherever you go, there you are.

Let's be there in love.

"Excellently observed," answered Candide; "but let us cultivate our garden"- Voltaire.