Let’s suppose we have several different vegetables in our refrigerator. We could take the lettuce, cucumbers, carrots, tomatoes, spinach and onions and throw them into a blender and make a vegetable drink. But then every sip of the drink would taste the same. That could be boring. Or, we could eat the lettuce until it’s gone, eat the cucumbers until they’re gone and so on. 

That could also be boring. But there is another option. We could use the vegetables to make salad. Every mouthful of salad would taste different. Definitely not boring.

Our country, our state, our county, our city is like that refrigerator containing different vegetables. We are those vegetables! We are all different. We are of different colors, different cultures, different backgrounds and with different experiences.  We need to mix ourselves together, get to know each other, to talk together, to share together, to work together, to make a diversity salad.  That would definitely not be boring.

But there’s one more step. We need salad dressing to complete our salad. We have two choices. We can choose a dressing of hate or a dressing of love, a dressing of separation, or a dressing of togetherness, a dressing or violence, or a dressing of compassion.

What we do is our choice!

— Roger Hull 

China Grove