Everybody is included
So much of our lives are spent in keeping other people out. We have private rooms, private houses, private clubs, and so on.
Of course there are times when everybody needs to be alone. Yet there is a sense in which our size as human beings can be measured by the circles we draw to take other people in. The smaller the circle, the smaller the person.
A strong person isn’t afraid of people who are different from himself. A wise man welcomes them. By shutting them out he denies himself the riches of other people’s experience. He starves his mind, and hardens his heart.
When a wise man names his brothers and sisters, he draws no circle smaller that the first one ever drawn on this earth. In the beginning God gave the earth its shape. He made it round. He included everybody. So should we.
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