Why Do We Divide Ourselves?
We humans sometimes forget
We are all humans after all.
We divide ourselves by gender,
By race, faith, and political stands.
We do not embrace us as a whole
But seem to want us all to be separate.
We argue whose life matters,
Who works the hardest, who does the least, and
Who is worthless because of age or disability, but
We say it nicely with political correctness…
The words may be nice, but the thoughts are just the same.
We invalidate each other because
We think the others invalidate us,
When in truth we invalidate each other.
We think too much how we are cheated
Instead about what we have given.
Why do we divide ourselves?
We walk under the same sun;
We breathe the same air;
We all have taken our first breath, and
One day will take our last.
Someday I hope we will learn.
Mary Elizabeth Todd
May 4, 2017
I wrote a poem back in my late teens about being bullied in school. I started it with these words “I have a double chin because I look at the floor instead of into other people’s faces…” I proceeded to describe how I had felt being bullied. How it made me feel so separate from everyone else. I then explained that I now look into the eyes of friends, but ended it with this line, “But I never can forget how separate feels and how separate really is.”
I was taught, and in many ways, it was a mantra of the 60s that my rights ended at the tip of my nose. Our society no longer respects that. We are rude and cruel and callous towards our fellow man. Some one pulls in front of us while we are driving, and we called the driver a name, honk our horn and give an obscene hand gesture. We laugh at people openly. Used to be only a middle school or high school thing done by the mean girls. It cuts to the core when it is you they are laughing at as you walk by them. But now it is society as a whole, we think it is our right. No, it isn’t that right ended at the tip of your nose.
The other thing I have notices is that sometimes if someone gets attacked by one person then other people who just read where one person has said something, and they jump into the fray. Some will not let it go and continue and continue and continue. It is like a feeding frenzy of a bunch of sharks jumping on what they perceive as an injured prey. When did we stop helping others when this occurs because we don’t. Animal rescue has some wonderful people in it from all walks-of-life from around the world. Most of them will give you their last dime. But there are those who are very unkind who seem to look for a story to attack someone and often one from the community of rescue. I posted that I was upset that the coyotes were killing my feral herd the Inheritance. I was helpless in protecting them. I live in a small forest. These cats were more like wild animals who eat what I feed them. I had lost 14 cats in just a few weeks. I saw the coyotes one morning looking for them. I lost lots of sleep trying to protect them. I posted this because I was heartbroken and then I was attacked and attacked and attacked. I was still reeling from one of the worst cat abuse and neglect situations I had ever seen just two months before, and I was raw. It sent me to a dark edge… this is what happens when there is a relentless attack on one person. No one has a right to do that… Sadly I confess, there were times I came close to do some of this myself. It is easy to get caught up in the flames of hate.
For that is what it is hate… it is not for justice for righteousness… any bullying at the core of it is simple hate. Sometimes it is a hate for a certain group of people. Sometimes it is a secret hatred of the bully for themselves. Sometimes their lives are rotten and hopeless and they hate how their lives are going and want to lash out, but for every action a bully does… at the inner core of it is hate.
What do we do to these people who hate? It is simple we love them. We love them despite how they are and how much we don’t want to love them. I know this because people loved me back to place I could forgive. God placed them all in my life. They were not easy teachers. They asked me hard questions. They made me look at me. They gave me courage to take the steps towards forgiveness.
I have worked hard in my life to get hatred from my heart… once it takes root it is like kudzu in how it chocks out the life of whatever it climbs upon. It twists and twines and winds in and out of your life until all of your life and your soul is totally encompassed by hatred. It seems like an impossible task, and it took me a long time to rid myself vine of hate. I remind myself daily that “Love is kind; Love is patient…” I Corinthians 13:4. If anything is my mantra, it is this.
I think we need to rid ourselves of the labels that separate us. We are all human beings first. Within each of us is DNA that makes us human beings first… and then breaks down to all the other things about us. Our skin, our gender, our eyes color, our hair color and as one very wise little girl told me once that some of us are spotted like you Mary Todd.
We need to be kind, patient and civil with everyone. We need to remember that we are more alike than we are different. We need to stop the attacks on anyone we oppose… we need to do this because each attack allows that vine of hate to twist more into our lives…We need to be givers of love even to those who anger, attack, frighten or destroy us.
I Fear the World is Full of Hate
I read the reports each day…
Someone has called someone
A cruel name; someone had beaten
A woman dressed in the clothes
They do not accept;
Someone has killed a person
Because they are angry, and
It is their right to kill.
None of us has the right to kill,
To maim, to call people names,
To belittle or to shame anyone.
I remember a time
When I was told
My rights ended
At the tip of my nose,
Or my toes, but
Never any farther.
People taking selfies,
People ignoring others,
People wrapped up inside
Their own lives, their own heads
They don’t see anyone else anymore.
If they hate, then in the small “planet of me”
They have a right to hate whomever
But they don’t…
Hate isn’t a right
Hate is not a building block
It is a bomb in a crowded street, or
A gun in a theatre or
Attacking anyone
Who disagrees with your own
View of the world.
Yours is just one of millions
Of views on this earth.
I am discouraged by the hate;
I fear we will destroy ourselves
In our determination
To prove our hates
Were righteous
And when our selfishness
Collides with love
I fear we will destroy that too.
Mary Elizabeth Todd
July 26, 2018
Declaration
Today I declare
I am a human being, who
Happens to a woman, who
Happens to be European by ancestry, who
Happens to be born in the USA, who
Happens to be over sixty years old, who
Happens to be a Southerner, who
Happens to be born in the Southern mountains, who
Happens to be retired, who
Happens to vote independently, who
Happens to have a family, who
Happens to have friends, who
Happens to love cream with my coffee which
I drink every morning from a mug
With a spoon in it to start my day, but
Before all those other things get in the way
For one reason or another-
I am a human being-
All the rest is the icing I spread on my life.
Mary Elizabeth Todd
September 24, 2014
Peace be with you in your going out and your coming in… and please remember that “Love is kind; Love is patient.” I know that love can win out.
Ever in Christ’s love,
Mary Elizabeth Todd
PS. The spoon in the cup is a quirky family trait several members of my family does it, and it feels all wrong when that spoon is not there… I love the quirks of life.
We humans sometimes forget
We are all humans after all.
We divide ourselves by gender,
By race, faith, and political stands.
We do not embrace us as a whole
But seem to want us all to be separate.
We argue whose life matters,
Who works the hardest, who does the least, and
Who is worthless because of age or disability, but
We say it nicely with political correctness…
The words may be nice, but the thoughts are just the same.
We invalidate each other because
We think the others invalidate us,
When in truth we invalidate each other.
We think too much how we are cheated
Instead about what we have given.
Why do we divide ourselves?
We walk under the same sun;
We breathe the same air;
We all have taken our first breath, and
One day will take our last.
Someday I hope we will learn.
Mary Elizabeth Todd
May 4, 2017
I wrote a poem back in my late teens about being bullied in school. I started it with these words “I have a double chin because I look at the floor instead of into other people’s faces…” I proceeded to describe how I had felt being bullied. How it made me feel so separate from everyone else. I then explained that I now look into the eyes of friends, but ended it with this line, “But I never can forget how separate feels and how separate really is.”
I was taught, and in many ways, it was a mantra of the 60s that my rights ended at the tip of my nose. Our society no longer respects that. We are rude and cruel and callous towards our fellow man. Some one pulls in front of us while we are driving, and we called the driver a name, honk our horn and give an obscene hand gesture. We laugh at people openly. Used to be only a middle school or high school thing done by the mean girls. It cuts to the core when it is you they are laughing at as you walk by them. But now it is society as a whole, we think it is our right. No, it isn’t that right ended at the tip of your nose.
The other thing I have notices is that sometimes if someone gets attacked by one person then other people who just read where one person has said something, and they jump into the fray. Some will not let it go and continue and continue and continue. It is like a feeding frenzy of a bunch of sharks jumping on what they perceive as an injured prey. When did we stop helping others when this occurs because we don’t. Animal rescue has some wonderful people in it from all walks-of-life from around the world. Most of them will give you their last dime. But there are those who are very unkind who seem to look for a story to attack someone and often one from the community of rescue. I posted that I was upset that the coyotes were killing my feral herd the Inheritance. I was helpless in protecting them. I live in a small forest. These cats were more like wild animals who eat what I feed them. I had lost 14 cats in just a few weeks. I saw the coyotes one morning looking for them. I lost lots of sleep trying to protect them. I posted this because I was heartbroken and then I was attacked and attacked and attacked. I was still reeling from one of the worst cat abuse and neglect situations I had ever seen just two months before, and I was raw. It sent me to a dark edge… this is what happens when there is a relentless attack on one person. No one has a right to do that… Sadly I confess, there were times I came close to do some of this myself. It is easy to get caught up in the flames of hate.
For that is what it is hate… it is not for justice for righteousness… any bullying at the core of it is simple hate. Sometimes it is a hate for a certain group of people. Sometimes it is a secret hatred of the bully for themselves. Sometimes their lives are rotten and hopeless and they hate how their lives are going and want to lash out, but for every action a bully does… at the inner core of it is hate.
What do we do to these people who hate? It is simple we love them. We love them despite how they are and how much we don’t want to love them. I know this because people loved me back to place I could forgive. God placed them all in my life. They were not easy teachers. They asked me hard questions. They made me look at me. They gave me courage to take the steps towards forgiveness.
I have worked hard in my life to get hatred from my heart… once it takes root it is like kudzu in how it chocks out the life of whatever it climbs upon. It twists and twines and winds in and out of your life until all of your life and your soul is totally encompassed by hatred. It seems like an impossible task, and it took me a long time to rid myself vine of hate. I remind myself daily that “Love is kind; Love is patient…” I Corinthians 13:4. If anything is my mantra, it is this.
I think we need to rid ourselves of the labels that separate us. We are all human beings first. Within each of us is DNA that makes us human beings first… and then breaks down to all the other things about us. Our skin, our gender, our eyes color, our hair color and as one very wise little girl told me once that some of us are spotted like you Mary Todd.
We need to be kind, patient and civil with everyone. We need to remember that we are more alike than we are different. We need to stop the attacks on anyone we oppose… we need to do this because each attack allows that vine of hate to twist more into our lives…We need to be givers of love even to those who anger, attack, frighten or destroy us.
I Fear the World is Full of Hate
I read the reports each day…
Someone has called someone
A cruel name; someone had beaten
A woman dressed in the clothes
They do not accept;
Someone has killed a person
Because they are angry, and
It is their right to kill.
None of us has the right to kill,
To maim, to call people names,
To belittle or to shame anyone.
I remember a time
When I was told
My rights ended
At the tip of my nose,
Or my toes, but
Never any farther.
People taking selfies,
People ignoring others,
People wrapped up inside
Their own lives, their own heads
They don’t see anyone else anymore.
If they hate, then in the small “planet of me”
They have a right to hate whomever
But they don’t…
Hate isn’t a right
Hate is not a building block
It is a bomb in a crowded street, or
A gun in a theatre or
Attacking anyone
Who disagrees with your own
View of the world.
Yours is just one of millions
Of views on this earth.
I am discouraged by the hate;
I fear we will destroy ourselves
In our determination
To prove our hates
Were righteous
And when our selfishness
Collides with love
I fear we will destroy that too.
Mary Elizabeth Todd
July 26, 2018
Declaration
Today I declare
I am a human being, who
Happens to a woman, who
Happens to be European by ancestry, who
Happens to be born in the USA, who
Happens to be over sixty years old, who
Happens to be a Southerner, who
Happens to be born in the Southern mountains, who
Happens to be retired, who
Happens to vote independently, who
Happens to have a family, who
Happens to have friends, who
Happens to love cream with my coffee which
I drink every morning from a mug
With a spoon in it to start my day, but
Before all those other things get in the way
For one reason or another-
I am a human being-
All the rest is the icing I spread on my life.
Mary Elizabeth Todd
September 24, 2014
Peace be with you in your going out and your coming in… and please remember that “Love is kind; Love is patient.” I know that love can win out.
Ever in Christ’s love,
Mary Elizabeth Todd
PS. The spoon in the cup is a quirky family trait several members of my family does it, and it feels all wrong when that spoon is not there… I love the quirks of life.