With large brown eyes shining, a wide smile and a conversation infused with enthusiasm, Abe, a butcher at my local supermarket, lit up my day.  I was buying shrimp for the dinner I was preparing the next evening for the incoming Earth Charter Community Summit organizers arriving from around the country.  My question to Abe was, “Where do the shrimp come from?”  I was looking to know more about whether they were farmed or not and did not expect to open a conversation that would confirm my faith in the intelligence and compassion of what the media likes to describe as “the masses.”

With large brown eyes shining, a wide smile and a conversation infused with enthusiasm, Abe, a butcher my local supermarket, lit up my day.  I was buying shrimp for the dinner I was preparing the next evening for the incoming Earth Charter Community Summit organizers arriving from around the country.  My question to Abe was, “Where do the shrimp come from?”  I was looking to know more about whether they were farmed or not and did not expect to open a conversation that would confirm my faith in the intelligence and compassion of what the media likes to describe as “the masses.”

The political battles have left good people concerned about the divisiveness of this country but I had been feeling more confused than concerned.  In poll after poll, I find that the majority of American people believe as I do about issues like same sex partners having the right to adopt children, global warming being a very serious problem, and support for the United Nations. Yet, I keep hearing how divided we are and after a while, I start to wonder if that is true.  Abe renewed my hope that we are more on the same page than we think but we need to be reframing our conversations.

Abe’s response to my question was: “Maine, Mexico and Indonesia.”  The last one sparked a conversation about the tsunami and the terrible loss of lives and Abe took off. I heard about the changes going on in the planet, the destruction of resources because of the use of fossil fuels, the frustration with why are we not doing differently and finally, “The Earth is a living planet.”  It seems Abe cares deeply about our planet and the life that dwells here including us and he sees all as one living system, which leads him to question our responsibility to one another and to the planet.  This “out of the blue” conversation gave me hope that other folks who cross my daily path may share views similar to mine more often than not.

A couple of days later I went back to supermarket  to learn Abe’s name as I wanted to write about him for this column.  I found Rick behind the butcher counter and told him about the conversation I had the other day with one of his co-workers. After telling me Abe’s name, Rick began talking about the living planet.  It seems that he watches Discovery Channel and he launched into the planet being alive for billions of years, its shifting plates and evolving process.  He also is concerned about its future and grateful to environmentalists for “keeping the rest of us on our toes.”

 I am willing to guess from other parts of my conversations with Abe and Rick that each voted differently in the last presidential election. But despite that difference, each comes together on common ground with myself when we speak about the planet and our home here.  This experience at supermarket reinforces for me the need to shift our conversations from “left /right”, Republican/Democrat, or “liberal”/“conservative” to the values we share.

Sociologist Paul Ray, Ph.D. discovered these shared values a while ago.  In his landmark Fetzer Study on Americans and their values he found that: 87% of all Americans believe that "We need to treat the planet as a living system." Just imagine if we all start talking about this shared value and what it means to us, what our role is and what we can do to keep all life on this planet vibrantly alive.  What an exciting, fruitful and connecting discussion that would be!

The Earth Charter is an international people’s Declaration of INTERdependence that is a vision of shared values for sustaining the planet, for more information contact Jan Roberts Director, National Office for Earth Charter USA Communities Initiatives 813-254-8454; This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it

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