Given the tumult of current events, does your memory take you back to a time when America seemed more unified than it is today? Or is that just the way we’d like to read the past?
Some of our divisions have been identified as North vs South, or East vs West, but not all are geographical including perhaps urban vs rural, and industrial vs agricultural.
Assess the state of affairs in our country today. What other evidence of disunity do you see?
Think back about our Disunited States and share forward!
From early in life we are warned not to talk to strangers and “stranger danger” may be drilled into our consciousness. And in today’s political climate it may seem a realistic warning with hate crimes and xenophobia on the rise.
But sometimes you need to approach a stranger, and sometimes you may simply want to. Have you done so with either positive or negative consequences?
Think back about Talking to Strangers and share forward!
We’ve stood witness to homelessness all our lives. In the 1950s we stared at “bums” — alcoholics usually confined to America’s skid rows. Earlier, the Depression and the Dust Bowl rendered whole families homeless.
Today, homelessness has become ubiquitous. Wealth disparity and income inequality combine with gentrification and untreated mental illness to spread homelessness across class lines and demographics.
How do you interact with the homeless in your world? Through your car window or with handouts on the street? Do you work in homeless aid?
Have you or a friend or family member ever been homeless? And what vision do you have for reducing the scourge of homelessness?
Do you think of yourself as a perfectionist, always striving to get things exactly right? Do you become frustrated when things go awry and grow impatient with the imperfections of others?
Do you think perfection is an obtainable goal? Or do you think it’s the enemy of the good as singer-songwriter Leonard Cohen says in Anthem: “There is a crack in everything, / That’s how the light gets in.”
