Today…as a “born again” Christian, liberal Democrat with four generations of gays and one grandchild who is trans and one who struggles with Autism in my family, I struggle to find the words to challenge everyone on either side of the” great divide” to work to understand each other. Understanding the other doesn’t make you change your beliefs, but it does take away the fear and the judgment of others that fuel hate and prejudice and, most importantly, being blind to their consequences. I don’t have simple answers to the most divisive issues, but I know that hate and the inability to have empathy for those different from us does not solve anything. At almost 86 I’ve just begun to experience a breakthrough on my prejudice and prejudgment of prejudiced people by actually beginning to understand others and to recognize my own blind side.  When I was seventeen in the mid 1950’s, a bomb was set off in the entry to our apartment in Houston because my newspaper editor father had written an editorial supporting a black woman for the school board as representation for the black schools.  This wasn’t even an integration of schools issue, just about some fair representation. That bomb took away my privileged white sense of safety and opened my eyes to the fear that black children live with all their lives.  I have just begun to understand that people are born with different personalities and to realize that none of us got a vote on whether we would grow up needing the security of tradition and fearing change or with minds that questioned the status quo and embraced change. We are all ignorant in thousands of ways. Ignorance is not stupidity unless we cling to it.  I was brought up to not be prejudiced against other races, but against ignorance.  Finally, in my eighties I began to recognize my own ignorance of why people think differently than I do and the prejudice and pre-judging that results from that.  Judging others was the sin Jesus talked most about, cautioning all of us to get free of the “log” in our own eye.  I guess finally beginning to understand others even in my eighties is at least a small sign of hope for us all. Understanding frees us to love those we disagree with. We don’t have to agree, but understanding and empathy are the foundation of a Jesus kind of love.

Here are two poems written in different decades of my earlier life.

Spring  I hunger to be born again/to take my hurts and failures/and mulch them into new beginnings/to turn them into fertile fields/of understanding and compassion/to experience again the greening out/of the frozen landscapes in my life/and gain a rich new Spring perspective/that builds on leaves and logs of yesteryears/to bring forth the ripe good fruit of love.

The Broken Body of Christ Reflecting on the Body/you-the hand, I-the foot/ Christ the head and heart/someone else the hidden part/ I let the Scriptures/flood my mind with images/with suddenly one image/ a moving picture/so harshly real, I gasp aloud./A person staggers/stumbles toward me/arms flailing, head jerking/back and forth in spasms/body parts all pulling different ways./This then-reality/Christ’s earthly body now./ Forgive us.