CONNECTIONS

In our weekly family zoom call we touched on the unexpected connections in unpredictable ways which we come across a we travel through time and space. Rob mentioned seeing and meeting people in Thailand who went to the schools he attended. I though of the woman who sat next to me in Gainesville Meeting who had grown up in Algiers the same neighborhood as I did, although at a later date. Her father worked around the corner from my home. Mark was reminded of the close friend in San Luis Obispo who knew my father through another friend. I remarked that these surprising connections never really come directly but come through second or third parties. Often we have to probe below surface acquaintance to find the threads which tie us together.

I knew Sally had a sister who lives in New Orleans and who has one of the amazing stories to tell about surviving Hurricane Katrina, but I had never met her. A while back I learned that Sally's sister has a blog titled angels and people, life in New Orleans. It takes very little time to follow this blog because several times a week she will post a photograph which she has recently taken, along with a title which may suggest what she sees in it. I am grateful for the connection I discovered with Suzanna through Sally.

This I found particularly moving: Figure By Mount Olivet Cemetery fence

 

I try to hold this picture in my consciousness as reminder that we have built a wall between our comfortable, middle class existence and the lives of those whom we have excluded and denied opportunities because of race, class or traditional barriers. The walls will not fall of their own accord nor can they be removed by those who are imprisoned by them. We who built them, benefit by them, and who keep them in repair to protect ourselves, must be the ones who remove them.