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The answer is, of course – “As many divisions as the woodcutter and the saw can create.” There are so many sure fire ways to divide and conquer, in order to break any strong coalition of forces sharing the same objective. In this case, the forces of nature and environment coalesced to make the Oak tree ‘mighty’, long before the woodcutter made plans to reduce it to sawdust. To stay with the tree analogy for a bit longer, one might also ask – “How many divisions does it take to turn a forest of trees into marketable consumer paper products?” Obviously, there is no realistic answer to this question, unless we have been provided with reliable data concerning the quantified statistics of each tree, the entire forest, the consumable pulp per-acre of land, and each individual sawdust granule. Unfortunately, trees are unable to speak for themselves, so they can raise no objections when the lumber industry comes to their forest to divide and conquer. Or maybe they are speaking, and we just aren’t hearing them. Whatever the case, we humans continue the wholesale disintegration (the dividing up) of old-growth forests and jungles, seemingly without sensible consideration to the impact this divisiveness has on the overall health of the planetary environment, and furthermore, the continuation of the human race.

 “Black, White, and Blue Memorial”

Much like the forests, human societies are susceptible, indeed quite vulnerable to, divisive strategies designed by corrupt powers in an effort to conquer and divide the people. Presumably, there is commonality within every community – we connect with others in our community through common interests, attitudes and values. There is also unity within every community – where sharing these commonalities becomes the impetus for unification. To put it simply – We human beings have created communities because we want to belong to a group of others that share our personal perspectives. The disintegration of community, begins with divisiveness. When one or more people within the community disagree with personal perspectives shared by the rest, they are seen as a threat to unity and commonality. This is also how the crowd mentality can quickly turn a previously gentle person toward violent aggression. How can communities become less susceptible to the disintegration caused by divisiveness? Interactive communication restores unity. Open mindedness restores commonality. Yes, I realize just how simple minded, and positively naive those two suggestions sound, but I’ve notoriously held a penchant for simplicity, so I will not elaborate further on this subject… at least for now.

Mission work on “The Hope House” (girls orphanage) in Haiti, August, 2001

It seems like so long ago, and yet only yesterday, that I made a trip to Haiti to help with the construction of “The Hope House”. As I recall it now, the most difficult hurdle in terms of working with Haitian construction workers on this project, was the language barrier. Most workers speak Haitian Creole, which is a long way off from my blue-collar Yankee dialect. In hindsight I can see that the language barrier was a subset of broader, more divisive difficulties caused by the obvious hurdle of cultural commonality. For the entire nine days that I spent in Haiti, I felt like I was in a completely different world, where all of my Western Cultural understandings were stood on their heads, and therefore useless. And yet, still the local Haitians and our group of missionary workers managed to create unity. We found the common ground we shared by being human.

Christopher Moore, Mordechay Ramos and Fred McKenna – Masters of the Superheros on Parade production. At Moore Art Expressions we kept the focus on similarities rather than differences, in the art, and in the teamwork. A great model for creative communities!

There are so many different ways to promote unity instead of division in our lives. The more cohesive our communal bonds become, the stronger this human race will grow, to face the challenges ahead. The healing begins at home, within our own hearts. We must be willing to be selfless on occasion, conceding our own self-interests to the common interests of the group. When a community works in concert to remedy a communal problem, the whole group and each individual within the group, comes out stronger.

We joined forces to help mend the leg of this bronze Olympian. As you can see, without Christopher under the table ‘twisting his nut’, Fred and I, might have easily lost control of this 300 lb, one legged, discus thrower.

Thank you for reading this entry to the “Grand Providentia United, Online Journal. Please join me again on Sunday 3/15 for another ‘outlandishly delicious word buffet!’