In all honesty, I could write a novel on this subject. But I will try and compress all my thoughts.
Yesterday I was in conversation with someone about religion, and commented on something I had heard recently, that we all need each other. We need the different ideas and thoughts; we need debate and disagreements. Without these things we would become so unbalanced, so arrogant, and probably miss out on some vital things.
Walking away from this conversation, I kept thinking about it.
Every person has something so precious to offer. Something to offer me. Everyone was created by the Divine, and He placed such a specific part of Himself in all of his creation, especially humanity which was created in His image. I don't know if anyone else finds this as cool as I do!
In my opinion that means that I can learn about God and a part of who He is as much from a Christian, as a Muslim, or an atheist. Every person I come in contact with can open a new perspective of the Divines being - Gives me a whole new mindset on the way I look at, and even treat people.
Sometimes when I am on the bus in the mornings, jam packed with people I look around and am so in awe with all the different types of people there are, and how they all have something beautiful in them and something to teach me.
One morning across from me there was this man with a long dark coat, spikes coming out his face, black nail polish, and black makeup on and beside him sat a guy a little over weight, glasses on face and gameboy in hand. They were squished together, and I thought it was such a beautiful sight.
One you only see on the bus, but I thought, wouldn't it be cool if they could find more in common than the fact that they rode the 95 bus together, if they decided they could learn from one another and that both had important and vital pieces to them that only they could ever share.
That is one reason I find myself so disappointed that we separate our churches into denominations, or that we don't find more ways to connect with each other. I want to learn from the baptists or Catholics. I don't know why we all have to agree in church? God is too diverse for any of us to get Him completely rounded off this side of Heaven.
This is an argument I use often in my field, it helps to bring the value of people who have disabilities upfront. There have been a few debates that we have had, on mercy killings of people with disabilities, who are in pain or can't do anything for themselves and are solely dependant on others (which I find to be beautiful, aren't we all dependant? Just because they are just dependant in an obvious way, doesn't give anyone any right to take away their humanity.) {over that tangent}. But I every time bring to the table how their humanity is no different than my own. That every person I have worked with has taught me something, and that is something you cannot argue.
We will never fully know what goes on inside the mind of the non-verbal disabled man, or the one that goes from bed to wheelchair to bed in a day, and that is sacred.
You can never take away a soul of a person, and one of the best and most fun parts of my job is to dig deep and allow others to see the beauty I do. Show people that maybe Bill shows his personality through the way he blinks, and that can never be taken away.
I just recently left my job, where I was working with adolescents with behaviours, and on the days that I would struggle to not take the punch I got in the face to heart. I would think of the things they taught me about God, and find it easier to love them the way the Divine does.
So today, on Valentines, take a moment to look at people differently. Look at them in awe and love and wonder. Look at them with the knowledge that they are unique and can show you a world of something -different-, something you need to learn.
