A Nice Cup of Tea & a Sit Down

All through the year, people make crude attempts at humor by poking fun at people they perceive to be at a lower level of the evolutionary scale than themselves.   For the most part, their peers will laugh and try to come up with an even more spiteful attempt at humor at someone else's expense.   The truth is though, that poking fun at people who are less fortunate than ourselves is not at all funny; it is mean, it is spiteful, and it is terribly unkind.

There are people who have made a successful and lucrative career out of being mean in this way, especially singling out a group of people referred to as "Rednecks".   Rednecks are portrayed as people who are bereft fiscally, morally, and educationally.    It may well be that this group of people did not have the same opportunities as others, especially if they are living and working in the more rural and impoverished areas of this country.   However, despite the jokes and digs from others, rednecks tend to make the best of what they have, even if it does seem unorthodox to those who are not in their position.

Rednecks are not the only people singled out as the butt of crude humor, mean spirited comments, and discrimination (both subtle and overt).   In every city, town, and village, there will be a family or group of people that will be perceived to be different from everyone else.   Whatever that difference is; be it race, color, creed, religion, disability, sex, sexual orientation, age, education, illness, social customs, etc.; it does not legitimize everyone else treating them in ways that are unfair or inferior to the way that they treat themselves.

Whatever our talents and whatever our social standing; there is not one of us who is better than anybody else.   This means that it doesn't matter whether you bought your garden wind-chime from Saks 5th Avenue, or you made a wind-chime by threading some empty beer cans onto a piece of string.   Either one does not make you a better or worse person than the other.

Similarly, there is not any one of us who is more deserving of positive or negative things than anyone else.   We are all human beings, and we all have the capacity to do right and wrong.   We all have the capacity to be kind or mean.   We all have the capacity to love or hate.   With this in mind, what really counts is what we choose to do.   Clearly at the moment, many people are choosing meanness, hate, and wrongdoing.   What a wonderful thing it would be if everyone chose love, kindness, and doing that which is right as their resolution for the upcoming new year of 2008.

At this Christmas time, I would ask each of you who are reading this to remember the words of Jesus Christ: "I give you a new commandment: love one another; as I have loved you, so you are to love one another."

We all of us, no matter what facade we choose to show to the world; have in our hearts kindness and humility; surely it is time to start showing that?

Wherever your life leads you this Christmas, may your God go with you, and may the spirit of the season bring you peace, love, harmony, and understanding.