This week we have witnessed two tragedies that have consumed our news media, the bombing in Boston and the explosion in a fertilizer plant in West, Texas. In both cases there was tragic loss of lives and the causes and issues raised by each incident are quite different, yet they unite us in our concern for the families and friends of those killed in each incident.
Yesterday on NPR I listened to a curious report about two freshman senators who were brought together by these tragedies and who found their common humanity in similar reactions and concerns. Senator Ted Cruz from Texas and Senator Elizabeth Warren from Massachusetts discovered common concerns and interests and Senator Cruz expressed surprise at this, given the diametrically opposed political orientation of his fellow Senator.
This should not have surprised us nor Senator Cruz. Whatever our political beliefs and orientation, we are first of all Americans and more than than human beings with a concern for the welfare of our fellow human beings. I have often written in this space of urgent necessity of setting aside the things that divide us to find our common humanity, our shared values, and our love of our fellow man.
Why do we insist on dividing ourselves? Into red and blue states, into liberals and conservatives, into black and white, into rich and poor. We can find even more that divide us if we seek them. Yet who can deny the joy, the pleasure, of connecting with one another, of finding things than join us and unite us? I could not help but reflect on this as I heard the story about Warren and Cruz connecting. Sex divides them, race divides them, political orientation divides them. Yet they found common ground in their humanity as they confronted the issues surrounding the terrorist bombing in Boston.
We should all look more often for such bonds, for those things that draw us together. In that union and commonality we find that which joins us and we need so urgently to unite in the face of the many problems and crises we face today as a people and as nation. We need to be more tolerant of our differences and more dedicated to the idea that united we stand and divided we fall.
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