Out of Diversity, Unity.

​There is a similar statement on the dollar bill.  e pluribus unum.  Out of many, one. 

As I walked up to the Meeting House today I saw three monarch butterflies alight on a bush with many flowers.  They worked their way around the flowers sticking their very fine proboscis into each one gathering up the succulent nectar.  The flower gives its nectar away and for the price of this transaction its DNA gets a free ride to another plant (hopefully similar plant) somewhere else. 

I marveled at this symbiotic union.  

The plant is fixed to the earth.  The butterfly has wings and can take to the air. Not only are they vastly dissimilar in mobility but they come from completely different kingdoms. Animalia and Plantae.  And yet they cohabitate, they support one another, they actually help one another survive.  Maybe it is the biologist in me, but WOW -- that's pretty darn cool. 

As I reflect on the political division America presently finds itself in, I am drawn to nature to figure these things out. I'm told by biologists far more informed that I that in nature there is more cooperation than division.  The butterfly and the flower prove this. 

The queries that I am considering this morning are: 

• What can I learn from people who so vastly different than I? 
• In what ways can I find common ground with those who are different that me? 
• How might the differences I share with people actually be a source of support for me (and for them)?

​I suspect that many thousands of years of evolution produced the symbiosis between the butterfly and the flower.  But you know what?  We don't have that long. We need to figure this out ... and soon.  And from a biological and political standpoint it makes sense that as a species we'll get farther together than divided. 

Joseph Olejak  

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