As was written in the post prior to this one, one of the primary goals of Umoja Unity Gardens is to foster spaces that allow people to share intimate stories about themselves or their cultures. Not selfishly, as a means of focusing only on the one or the tribe, but generously, in hopes of showing that there is more that unites rather than divides us. Here, “us” does not mean humans alone. It includes the animals, plants and ecosystems that enmesh us all in an unavoidable (but often ignored) net of interrelationships.

In a word, Umoja Unity Gardens are looking for stories that rhyme, like this:

Billowy white clouds drift languidly across the calm cerulean sky.
Schooners, sails slack in the breeze, meander astride slate-blue tides below.

Anon

Do you see the rhyme? In the Western or American sense of the word, you might look for it at the end of each sentence or phrase. But in the Eastern sense, the word rhyme points to a kind of parallelism, where two lines of poetry simultaneously display their sameness (despite their differences) in a kind of extended analogy.

Look back on the two example lines above. Do you see the rhyme now? The white-sailed schooners match the white clouds. Both are gliding across expanses of blue, one sea above and another below.

When read in tandem, the lines deepen each other. Hearing them together, a person might begin to contemplate if the crew of a ship is assembled as randomly (or not) as the droplets that make up a cloud, if there is meaning in the fact that both will soon disappear from our daily concerns as if they had never been, if it is mere coincidence that in this moment celestial and earthly movements seem bound together in some timeless dance.

Tell two stories together – one black another white; one Muslim a second Jewish; one from the perspective of Native Americans, women, the LGBTQ community, Hispanics, whoever…the other a story from a different perspective – and they will rhyme if we are willing to listen for the parallels. They will tell us that, indeed, there is more that unites than divides us. But only if we find a space to listen, and only if we are willing to stand there long enough to truly hear.

The cultural stories to the right of this page are some examples the historical and personal rhymes I hope people from different backgrounds will begin to hear around every Umoja Unity Garden and beyond.  

• Dirty Immigrants?
• The Irish, N-Word, & White-T Word