Dear Hearts,
By the time you read this, our preschool will be buzzing with little ones eager and
anxious (Lucy calls it being “anx-er”) and full of energy! And parents, some for the
very first time, will have handed their kiddos over into the care of someone else,
maybe with an eagerness…but mostly with anxiousness. Their children will be
welcomed into a setting which celebrates the great variety of skin tones and dialects
and traditions and beliefs and backgrounds that will be present like so many colors
of fall leaves (God’s great “Amen!” to the beauty and intention of diversity).*
And, before you know it, those little ones will sing silly songs together and play
side-by-side and build tall towers and laugh and clap at their shared accomplishment.
And bit by bit, they will learn to encourage and celebrate each other’s uniqueness.
Their parents’ anxiety makes sense though, doesn’t it? Somewhere along the way,
we seem to have traded the celebration of diversity for the fear of differences. We’ve
traded sharing with separating. And joy and hospitality seem to have been replaced
with suspicion.
God forgive us and make us rejoice in Your great, beautiful, multi-colored, belief,
language, looking world. And in our rejoicing, make us hospitable. Amen.
God’s peace and much love,
Pr. Sara