Common Ground

I liked the story of Hazel, the athiest humanitarian who was once involved in supporting communism. Her story tells us we can be from different religious and socio/polictical backgrounds, but our underlying desires and responsibilities to help each other and take care of the world are the same. As far as putting myself in unfamiliar situations with people I consider very different from myself, I've only just begun experiencing that. I think it takes a certain amount of self confidence to become curious enough to break down those barriers that keep up from experiencing something new. Our service sites in Phoenix have been experiences outside anything I've ever done. I've never worked with "at risk" kids before, but they act like any other middle school kid I've met. They were a really inspiring group of kids, though, because they were at their community center voluntarily. Not many suburban middle school kids would make a weekly or biweekly commitment to work on life skills.