In my youth I believed in people.  People were G-d’s creatures.  People came in all colors, shapes, and sizes.  I believed in them all.  I loved their differences.  To find one different from another was sheer joy. – “Oh the multifaceted face of G-d!” I would say to myself.

Today, older in years, I still believe in people.  People can be God creatures.  People come in all colors, shapes and sizes.  I believe in them all.  I love their differences.  And, I love how we are all the same – how we are all the face of G-d.  “Oh, the multifaceted face of G-d!” I sometimes say to myself.

Throughout my life some of my deepest sorrows have come out of situations wherein people have been left out.  While in pre-school – in the days of segregation – I passed, with my caretaker, a schoolyard full of children.  I asked to stop and play and was told it was not possible.  “Why?” I asked.  “I do not know,” she said.  The face of G-d in that playground was ‘colored’ and the “I don’t know” has been in my ears ever since.  It was a formative experience.  I remember the feeling of knowing that I would work to find an answer to my question.

One of the more difficult aspects of doing that has been to define what the actual question was.  At the time of the asking, what the color of the skin of those children was hadn’t even been observed.  I had recognized the souls inside the containers and it was what was inside that I wanted to play with.  Had I noticed would I have cared?  But, the answer that I got told me that for some it was relevant.  In fact, for some, it was everything.  It also told me that the reason(s) why made no sense at all to the one that spoke the ‘answer’.  From the moment the ‘answer’ was completed, the question was a new one altogether. It was no longer the simple question of a child.

Looking at it now it would appear that it had become a complexity – a tangled web of emotional responses. But then, at four or five years of age, it was simple, straight-forward and unpretentious. – “Why would ANYONE think that such an insignificance mattered?” … Even then I saw exclusion as a two-way issue.  I was excluded from their world as much as they were excluded from mine.  I have never understood the issue of segregation as a set of one way exclusions.  The struggle to find an answer to my question from many years ago has not been easy.