Dona Nobis Pacem

Compare and Contrast

Princess Gail and I moved from Toledo, Ohio down here to Winston-Salem, North Carolina a little over a year ago.  North to South. It has been a fun sort of culture shock! I find it interesting how in the same country, people can be so very different. The pace of life is different. The accents, inflections, tones, and phrases of our English language are different. The way people treat each other is different. The music, art, and even the view of history are different. Gail and I should stand out like sore thumbs. Ha!, maybe we do! But you wouldn’t know it. Everywhere we go, we have felt the warm welcome of “Southern Hospitality.” We don’t really fit in yet. We may as well have “northerner” tattooed on our foreheads. Yet we feel accepted… just the way we are!

It took a while, but I think I figured out why we are treated so nicely. It was a slap-my-forehead-duh moment. It’s not about the things that make us different! It’s about the things that make us the same!

We all are born, grow, and learn. We all work and play. We all sing and dance. We all love and are loved. We all are students and teachers. We all make mistakes, we grow some more, we are forgiven and we forgive. We all suffer, pay the taxman, and we die. There are so many things that bind us all together as human beings. It is so easy to understand that there are variations to these things, but that in their essence, they are human things, common to us all. Common. Communion. Community. Peace!

I will look for those things in people that make us the same!

22 thoughts on “Dona Nobis Pacem”

  1. Hello! I'm peace blog-hopping today. Thanks for sharing your message. I'm glad you are being treated well in the south. I love that you discovered it's because there are wasy in which we are the same. And the differences don't make us bad – just different. Thanks for your addition to Blog Blast for Peace!

  2. Our differences makes us interesting, our similarities bond us together. Diversity and Unity….

    ☮ & ♥ Happy BlogBlast for Peace from one of the Bees ☮ & ♥

  3. I wish everyone could think so like minded. I think all people have the same wants and needs and indeed we are more alike than different. I say celebrate the differences!

  4. This was so well written and timely. It really is better to focus on the way that we are alike as opposed to how we are different.

    Welcome to the south! Peace!

  5. Hi there Ferd, I had trouble getting on this page before…error messages! :-(…so I'm only just getting round to visiting.

    It is funny, you have picked just the idea I was going to write for my daughter's Peaceglobe later! Yes, how alike we are, both good and bad, that the differences should be like minor variations from one rose to another…in essence a rose, but each has subtelties. Most of us wouldn't discard one over another just because the petals are slightly differently arranged, or there is slight variation of colour. In fact, that's what makes a vase full of roses beautiful…those little differences!

    Thank you for sharing a wonderful post!

    Annelisa (fellow worker bee 🙂 bzzzZZZzzzzZZZ)

    Peace to you and yours, Ferd and Gail x

  6. I love this post and this globe! There is a common theme this year of diversity and tolerance. Differences might be en vogue but our commonalities make us one. Thanks for such a thought-provoking post.

    But say…when I met you and Gail last year I did NOT see any tattoos. Just sayin'….

    1. Thanks, Annelisa!

      And what an awesome blog that is! Peace Bloggers Unite was/is a lot of work, but a great idea and beautifully done! :yes:

  7. wow, I missed this one last year!” Mind you… last year was messy so I missed a lot of blog blast (we had no internet for three days over “the” most important week of the year. )

    Lovely post, Ferd.

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