Streams of Mercy
“Everything Is Beautiful" is a song written, composed, and performed by Ray Stevens in the summer of 1970. I had just graduated college and was out to change the world, and this was to be the song of my heart for years to come:
Everything is beautiful in its own way
Like a starry summer night or a snow covered winter's day
Everybody's beautiful in their own way
Under God's heaven, the world's gonna find a way.
There is none so blind as he who will not see
We must not close our minds, we must let our thoughts be free
For every hour that passes by, you know the world gets a little bit older
It's time to realize that beauty lies in the eyes of the beholder
Everything is beautiful in its own way
Like a starry summer night or a snow covered winter's day
Ah, sing it children
Everybody's beautiful in their own way……
We live with billions of other people on this earth, and we have so much to learn and so much love and understanding to share with one another. This is what our world needs! We should embrace and celebrate how special and different we are. Being judgmental and not appreciating just how vital diversity is in our lives should be a thing of the past. The human race is extraordinarily diverse in so many ways: gender, ethnicity, race, class religion, nationality, sexuality, philosophy, lifestyle. Now is the time to embrace this diversity.
The history of intolerance is a long and brutal one where people who don’t fit a criteria and set of expectations are not accepted in our society. The list of major tragedies in our history that were caused solely by this way of thinking include slavery, the Holocaust, The Crusades, the genocide of the American Indian, and the list could go on and on. So many people have died or been deprived of basic rights because of a lack of understanding – an understanding that difference in appearance, belief, or way of life does not make one person better than another.
I came across this fresh new way of looking at diversity:
Different
Individuals
Valuing
Each other
Regardless of
Skin
Intellect
Talents or
Years
And poet, Maya Angelou reminds us, “In diversity, there is beauty and there is strength.”
Fifty year later, “Everything is Beautiful” is still the song of my heart – if only there were more folks to join in singing it. Ever grateful for those streams of mercy, never ceasing.
Elizabeth