Inclusiveness

 Diversity

a first step out of the prison of selfishness

is to see another as part of yourself,

first we find commonality in how the other is like us:

family, gender, skin color,

if we’re lucky, we find a partner who stretches our sense of self,

if we’re even luckier, we expand who we feel we are

so that another’s differences actually pull us closer to them,

so that the difference in how they look, where they come from,

actually can endear them to us,

as if we understand better the human mosaic

of which we’re a piece that reaches toward the whole,

Vancouver, British Columbia, speaks to me of transcending the parochial,

as I watch residents and visitors walk, run, bike, scoot by,

I feel the mosaic expand into a larger whole than I first felt,

how even better it is to expand the mosaic

into the plants, animals, rocks, water, air,

who are also integral to the grand design,

Buddhism especially argues that all of life is one,

and religion after religion expands the sense of God

as filling the universe and being endlessly good,

so that not only all of life is one

but that all reality is one.

by Henry H. Walker

July 15, ‘22