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Diversity & Sensitivity"Don't be fooled by the face I wear, for I wear a thousand masks, and none of them are me. Don't be fooled, for God's sake don't be fooled. I give you the impression that I'm secure, that confidence is my name and coolness is my game, and that I need no one. But I don't believe in me. Beneath dwells the real me in confusion, in aloneness, in fear. That's why I create a mask to hide behind, to shield me from the glance that knows, but such a glance is precisely my salvation. That is, if it's followed by acceptance, if it's followed by love. It's the only thing that can liberate me from my own self built prison walls. I'm afraid that deep down I'm nothing and that I'm just no good and that you will reject me. And so begins the parade of masks. I idly chatter to you. I tell you everything that's really nothing and nothing of what's everything, of what's crying within me. Please listen carefully and try to hear what I'm NOT saying. I'd really like to be genuine and spontaneous and ME. But you've got to help me. You've got to hold out your hand. Each time you're kind and gentle, and encouraging, each time you try to understand because you really care, my heart begins to grow wings, feeble wings, but wings. With your sensitivity and sympathy, and your power of understanding, you alone can release me from my shallow world of uncertainty. It will not be easy for you. The nearer you approach me, the blinder I may strike back. But I'm told that love is stronger than strong walls and this lies my only hope. Please try to beat down those walls with firm hands, but gentle hands, for a child is very sensitive. Who am I, you may wonder? I am every man you meet, and also every woman that you meet, and I am YOU, also." author unknown "Love asks people to become more of their true selves in each other's presence and to become more steadily alive and sensitive to each other's person." Eugene Kennedy "We can release and actually use the enormous wisdom and power of our diversity - instead of crushing it, isolating it, or soothing it into a world of gray tolerance." Tom Atlee "There is much to be won and so little to lose in the realization of a world where the dignity of each person is worthy of celebration and protection." Carmen Vazquez "In Germany they first came for the Communists and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Communist. Then they came for the Jews, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Jew. Then they came for the trade unionists and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a trade unionist. Then they came for the Catholics and I didn't speak up because I was a Protestant. Then they came for me -- and by that time, no one was left to speak up." Paster Martin Niemoller "You can educate your mind, but if you don't educate the heart you haven't educated the person." author unknown "Thirty-Nine Years - Too Short - Too Long - Long Enough" Written by Willa Perrier
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