Us, and Them.

And [Peter] said to them, "You yourselves know how unlawful

it is for a man who is a Jew to associate with a foreigner or visit him;

and yet God has shown me that I should not call any man

unholy or unclean."

Acts 10:28

It was with a heavy heart that I picked my daughter up and carried her back home as she stared up an empty driveway, her little hand slowly waving a lonely good-bye to the children she had been chasing, two young boys who had long disappeared into a backyard.  

Evelyn was so excited when she recognized them from a previous encounter a few days before when she was on a walk with her dad.  They were playing in the front yard of a house situated comfortably at the end of two streets; the solitary house on its own tiny dead end, facing a T-intersection with the street on which we live.  From the sidewalk in front of our house, facing east, their house is right there staring back at us.  The boys had been playing with paper airplanes, and asked if she was allowed to play with them, too.  They ran around the modest lawn, laughing as the wind caught the homemade toys and tossed them haphazardly about.  She is a social creature, and was comfortable in her natural element - playing with other children and reveling in the connection she could share with people closer to her age of seventeen months.

She stood in front of our house this evening and watched them as they left their porch and slowly walked along their yard.  When she saw them, she started waving a frantic "Hello," and her little legs began pumping furiously, taking quick but tiny steps.  They watched nervously as we approached, then turned to walk up a driveway.  The older of the boys tossed a few words over his shoulder as they disappeared.

"My mom said we can't."

Of course, Evelyn tried to follow them up the driveway, steeling herself against my hand on her shoulder as I held her back.  She didn't understand what they had said, of course.  But I did.

They are Orthodox Jews, and we are not.  

I felt a stab in my heart as I witnessed innocent children become victims of adult intolerance, a concept that we are clearly not born with but that must be taught and learned.  Evie pulled against my hand, broke free and ran up the driveway after the boys who just a day before had no preconceived notions of my daughter, who laughed and played and desired her friendship until the harsh hand of jaded years stamped into their tender minds the idea of "Us" and "Them."  As I picked her up and carried her away, I felt only mild relief knowing that she was too young to learn that lesson today.

We are created wonderfully and fearfully in the image of our Father, and yet we each are unique individuals much more complex than the cultural groups in which we find ourselves.  We are not a number, but a name; not a skin color, but all one human flesh.  We are not the personification of the ideologies we espouse or the religions in which we put our faith, but are intellectual beings capable of agreeance or dissent, capable of our own thoughts.

Our dignity and humanity is stripped from us when we are sorted into "Us" and "Them."  It is the path of least resistance, the easiest to tread:  To simply accept that it might be in our nature to classify each other instead of recognizing that it is and fighting it.  It is safer to look upon someone as a stereotype than to open ourselves to the possibility that each individual is deeper than our shallow understanding can fathom.

I can only imagine what it was the boys' mother told them about my daughter, how she justified an ingrained intolerance to her children and to herself.  I also imagine what the world would be like if we all had to explain to a child why we do not tolerate them.  The simplicity involved in an explanation like that might make us realize how ridiculous it is to completely disregard someone because of petty differences.

As I walked back up the path to our front door, I heard my neighbor's voice through the hedges that separate our properties.  "I think I hear Evie over there!" she said to her son, who was out front playing T-ball.  I set Evelyn down on the sidewalk and gave her a little push, and she ran excitedly to their yard where she was welcomed.  Eventually, both of our families were convened in the front yard, eight in all, talking, laughing and watching kids being kids.