Unringing Donne's Bell

Today is Blog Action Day (and you didn't even bother to get a card, didja?) when bloggers from around the world write about one important global topic, this year expressed as "The Power of We."

I know about this thanks entirely to the efforts of John B, a fellow blogger and a talented and dedicated health care professional (just two of the many colors with which he paints his life) who demonstrated the power of the concept by sharing it.
Here's another example. And, because you asked so nicely, here's another.

You'll read a lot about the power of we today but I wanted to steal your eyes and mind for no more than a minute to suggest the choice of the first person plural pronoun was not accidental. Serious topics have been chosen in previous years: climate change, poverty, potable water and food. We share all of those things and as such have them in common as shared references and concerns.

Especially in an election year with national implications and impacts it's easy to see the world, our shared world, through the prism of political ideology and fractious factions of us and them. But don't, at least not today.

Instead, look at this and then tell me how it could have ever happened without a we to make it so. Look at how beautiful we are as a planet from Baumgartner's perspective. Personally when I watched it yesterday I wanted to kick myself because I had thought of shaving but figured it would make no difference, and it didn't, but it could have.        

My take-away from Baumgartner's effort: I saw no Republicans and no Democrats, no Protestants nor pagans, No Muslims nor Catholics, no brown nor yellow people, no rich and no poor, nor happy and sad, old and young or us and them. Just we, alone but together, separate yet united, always different and still somehow the same.

"“No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main; if a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as well as if a manor of thy friend's or of thine own were; any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind, and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee."
-bill kenny