Tearing Down the Lines That Divide

What Galatians 3 and a New York Mayoral Upset Have in Common

In a world obsessed with boundaries (whether they’re based on race, class, or gender) there’s an ancient creed that dares to say they don’t matter. Not because our differences disappear, but because love makes them sacred.

From a New York mayoral upset that stunned the political establishment to the Apostle Paul’s most radical declaration, we’ll explore what it means to move from exploitation to solidarity. This isn’t the Paul you think you know, and it’s not the Jesus most churches are preaching. It’s a way of being human that refuses to live inside the lines.

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The concept of permaculture first came on my radar in 2014 during my doctoral studies while reading Wendell Berry's, "Sex, Economy, Freedom, and Community." At the time I lived in a condo in Denver's Capital Hill, Denver's most population dense neighborhood, a tight conglomeration of multi-story buildings. It's a geography that provides little opportunity to engage with let alone participate in the care of soil, plants, and their ecological companions, but the idea of permaculture, a radical reimagining of our relationship with the Earth and each other took root in my psyche.

What is Permaculture?

For those who aren't familiar, the word permaculture combines "permanent" and "agriculture" into a philosophy that designs human systems to work with nature rather than against it.

At its heart are three ethics:

• Earth Care, which is about sustainable living systems,

• People Care, which focuses on meeting human needs justly, and

• Fair Share, where there are limits set on how much one person or group can have and finding ways to redistribute the surplus.

These aren't abstract principles—they're practical guides for everything from growing food to designing economies.

What makes permaculture revolutionary isn't just its technical approach but its insistence that human systems can be life-giving rather than extractive. In a world racing toward ecological collapse, permaculture whispers an alternative: We can create abundance by working with life's inherent wisdom.

A Personal Journey

As a student of spiritual formation who was desperately trying to find a different way to live, the possibilities of permaculture tapped into my psyche. That said, in the busyness of parenting, research papers, my job, and the challenges of everyday life, it largely laid dormant until 2020 when a Covid inspired men's circle prompted an initial dive into Bill Plotkin's, Soul Craft, a practice that could be called permaculture for the psyche.

I remember sitting on the front porch in those early days of extreme social distancing. By this time I'd moved to a house, but as a renter, I had little control over the landscaping. That said, I could see how the choices made by my landlords invited weeds to take root, not as an invasive species, but as opportunists, as nature's way of responding to soil degradation.

The same was true of my inner outcasts, the parts of me that ached to come home finding uncomfortable ways to make themselves known, something I shared about in depth last week on We Can Stay Human.

While I've primarily focused on cultivating my inner world since 2020, this summer I moved into my parents' old house which sits on 1.1 acre of land. For the first time in a long time, I now oversee personal property, and I knew from the start that if I was going to be here for any length of time, then converting the landscaping from what we might call traditional suburban to something inspired by the principles of permaculture needed to happen. The idea is to make my yard both a mirror of my inner world and microcosm of the larger society I am part of creating.

The Power of Diversity

So I've started taking classes on permaculture and biodiversity. It's fascinating to see how plants and components of an ecosystem all work together, integrating their unique strengths to create something magical. Each species contributes something vital: the tall trees provide shade, the nitrogen-fixers enrich the soil, the deep-rooted plants pull up minerals, the flowering plants attract pollinators. What emerges is naturally life-giving. The ecosystem feeds into itself. It cares for itself. It thrives on diversity.

It's such a stark contrast to monoculture where rows and rows of identical crops, stripped of complexity, require constant external inputs and interventions. Despite its apparent efficiency, monoculture depletes the soil, attracts pests, requires chemicals, and eventually collapses without intensive management. And I can't help but see the parallel to how we've constructed human society.

We've created our own social monocultures. We divide ourselves along only semi-permeable lines, frequently based on race, gender, and economic class … and the ones who manage to cross the boundaries do so by betraying their roots and selling their souls. Society separates us into uniform groups, valuing some contributions while dismissing others and often devaluing the very bodies that make those essential contributions. We create hierarchies that require constant maintenance and keep the masses living from desperation all while that deplete our collective resources. It's an approach to society that has us vulnerable to collapse.

Historical Perspective: The Great Depression

We've been on this brink before. As FDR ascended to the presidency during the Great Depression, he faced a deeply fractured society, the ultimate social monoculture where wealth had concentrated in the hands of a few while millions suffered. The economic elite recognized his proposals for regulation and relief as radical threats to their power.

In a famous 1936 speech, Roosevelt didn't shy away from this conflict but embraced it, declaring: "They are unanimous in their hate for me—and I welcome their hatred." This wasn't mere political posturing. It was a recognition that meaningful change requires confronting entrenched power structures.

The pressure from both suffering citizens and resistant elites created what historian Jill Lepore calls a "suicide pact," a moment where the old order had to sacrifice some of its dominance for the system to survive at all. This forced compromise led to the New Deal's revolutionary programs: Social Security, banking regulations, labor protections, and massive public works projects that literally transformed the American landscape.

Like permaculture's ethics of Earth Care, People Care, and Fair Share, Roosevelt's New Deal recognized that a healthy society requires balance, diversity, and limits on accumulation. It wasn't perfect, gender and racial inequities persisted and it only put limits on an exploitation rather than building a society rooted in economic solidarity, but it represented a dramatic shift toward ecological thinking in governance. That said, those who benefit from division haven't gone into the night quietly.

The Return to Inequality

The Deep State worked the levers of power to keep American's perpetual war machine churning, pressing first for the Korean War and then forcing the nation to choose between intervention in Vietnam or nurturing LBJ's Great Society.

On the corporate side, the Powell Memo, a confidential document written by future Supreme Court Justice Lewis Powell to the Chamber of Commerce, outlined a comprehensive strategy for corporate America to reassert its power over politics, education, and media. This wasn't merely a political counter-movement; it was a full ecosystem transformation. Through think tanks, lobbying organizations, and media ownership, wealth slowly reshaped the rules of governance. Campaign finance laws were systematically weakened, culminating in decisions like Citizens United that effectively legalized corruption by allowing unlimited corporate spending in elections.

As a result, we've seen a return to the social monoculture of the 1920s, wealth concentration not seen since the Gilded Age, anti-labor legislation, privatization of public goods, and the dismantling of the very regulations that once protected society's soil from erosion.

Just as monoculture farming creates temporary abundance at the cost of long-term vitality, this political monoculture has generated enormous wealth for a few while depleting the commons. The statistics tell the story: the top 1% now own nearly as much wealth as the bottom 90% combined. Using "realized pay" CEO compensation has grown 1,085% since 1978, while typical worker compensation has risen just 24% when adjusted for inflation.

This isn't accidental. It's the result of deliberate design choices, a system engineered to extract rather than regenerate. It is the very embodiment of choosing exploitation over solidarity.

Finding Hope in Nature's Renewal

So how do we come back from the brink? In my own yard, I've begun the slow process of soil recovery. The first step was simply creating compost - collecting food scraps, dried leaves, and grass clippings into a humble pile. There's something deeply hopeful about watching decomposition at work, witnessing how what appears to be waste becomes the foundation for new life. But it takes time. The microorganisms need months to break down the materials, and years to fully restore depleted soil. I sometimes sit beside my compost pile and remember that healing, whether in soil or society, cannot be rushed. The mycelial networks beneath the surface work at their own pace, creating the conditions for what's to come. This gives me hope, not the fleeting kind that demands immediate results, but the patient hope that knows transformation happens layer by layer, season by season.

Political Renewal in New York City

We see a different form of recovery happening in New York City where, just as society pressured FDR from the midst of the Great Depression, we might be once again seeing a quiet shift in the margins. Not far from Wall Street, streets in the Bronx are joining with bodegas in Jackson Heights, rising together to do something the insiders never expected. On July 1, 2025, New York City handed the Democratic mayoral primary not to a polished political dynasty, but to Zohran Mamdani—a Bangladeshi-Ugandan New Yorker, a Muslim, a democratic socialist, a critic of Israeli occupation, and a champion of the working class.

His victory sent tremors through the political establishment. He didn't do it by courting power, wealth, or mainstream approval. He stood unapologetically with tenants over landlords, with the poor over the powerful, with the global south over colonial dominance. And perhaps most notably, he did not walk back his support for Palestinian liberation, even as critics warned it would cost him everything. Instead, it became a catalyst.

And while we don't know what will happen if Mamdani ascends to the mayoral office, if he'll follow the path of Obama who inspired the masses on slogans of hope and change only to bail out banks while abandoning homeowners, AOC who chose tokens of identity over fighting for transformative policy, the capitulation of Bernie Sanders who speaks boldly until the time comes for him to bend the knee, or even Donald Trump who identifies with the working class in public only to sell them out in policy, but at this moment, he is a man whose very existence undoes the assumptions of status and identity, who refuses to separate his moral vision from his political one. And that kind of clarity, that refusal to fit inside the safe and narrow boxes of tradition, has always been dangerous. Moreover, it has always been holy.

Rediscovering Ancient Wisdom

You see, Mamdani's story doesn't just challenge politics. It challenges theology.

Because his rise, unexpected as it was, echoes something many people of faith, especially Christians, have forgotten: that the perennial wisdom, the wisdom of the mystics from an array of traditions, the truth brought forward by Jesus and through the early Christian community, is not about reinforcing the status quo. It's about dismantling the systems that divide us and naming, clearly and courageously, a new kind of belonging.

And just as Mamdani serves as an unexpected delivery mechanism of this message today, one of the most profound declarations of this new kind of belonging in the 1st Century came from an unexpected source both then and today: the Apostle Paul.

That's right, the same Paul who today is often seen as the defender of misogyny and heteronormativity, a Paul who seems obsessed with sexual ethics, who appears to silence women, who emphasizes order over justice, a caricature that casts him as the patron saint of religious control rather than liberation, was one of the most radical voices in the early Christian movement. His writings have been both deeply misunderstood and deliberately misinterpreted over centuries to reinforce rather than challenge social hierarchies.

But these surface readings ignore both historical context and Paul's larger message. The Paul who emerges from careful scholarship is not the rigid moralist of popular imagination, but a complex figure whose radical vision of human equality repeatedly challenged the foundational hierarchies of his world.

Paul's Holy Reversal

Nowhere is this more clearly seen in the words, "There is no longer Jew or Greek, no longer slave or free, no longer male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus." This wasn't a call to sameness. It was a call to sacred difference held together by love.

These words from Paul's letter to the Galatians don't float abstractly in a hymn of unity. The triad of race, class, and gender wasn't something Paul pulled out of the ether, rather he flips common phrases of the day that were used to reinforce the social order of the First Century world, a world structured through ethnic superiority, economic hierarchy, and rigid gender roles.

As one example, in first-century Jewish liturgy, many men prayed daily, "Thank you, God, that I am not a Gentile, a slave, or a woman." This wasn't fringe. It was foundational. A prayer of gratitude rooted in superiority.

Similarly, the pre-Socratic philosopher and Father of Science, Thales of Miletus declared: "There are three attributes for which I am grateful to Fortune: that I was born, first, human and not animal; second, man and not woman; and third, Greek and not barbarian."

This teaching was then taken by Socrates and reworked: "Grateful am I for having been born human and not a brute, a man and not a woman, Greek and not barbarian."

In other words, Paul's words come as a purposeful holy reversal, they are intended to undercut the very structures of oppression that existed in both his world and ours.

Paul: The Class Traitor

Moreover, Paul didn't cry out against these tools of oppression from below, he didn't do it as someone crushed by the weight of the hierarchy, rather he was both a Pharisee, a Jewish religious leader trained by the renowned teacher Gamaliel, and a Roman citizen. He held a dual identity that granted him exceptional status. Paul stood at the intersection of religious authority and imperial power. He had every advantage the ancient world could offer.

And yet, here he comes dismantling the very systems that had privileged him. The persecutor became the persecuted. The insider became the boundary-crosser. So when Paul echoes that structure and subverts it, he's not offering a theological nicety. He's throwing down a revolution.

This Paul is raw. Angry. On fire with the Spirit of the crucified Christ, dismantling every system he once defended. And the cross itself, Rome's tool of execution, becomes his proof. Because God didn't save the world by dominating it. God saved the world by standing in solidarity with the crucified. That's the heart of Galatians. And that's the soul of this ancient creed of oneness.

A Universal Truth

And Paul is not alone in this vision. Throughout the world's mystical traditions, we hear the same heartbeat.

In Sufi Islam, Rumi writes, "Beyond ideas of right and wrong, there is a field. I'll meet you there." For Sufis, love is the bridge that dissolves the illusion of separateness.

In mystical Judaism, the Hasidic masters taught that the divine spark dwells in every soul and that the purpose of life is to uncover that light in one another.

Buddhist teachings invite us to see through the illusion of ego and boundary. To awaken is to recognize our inter-being with all life.

In the Sikh tradition, Guru Nanak declared, "There is no Hindu, there is no Muslim," not to erase identity, but to transcend it in service of unity.

And in Christian mysticism, Meister Eckhart insisted that, "the eye through which I see God is the same eye through which God sees me."

Each of these voices, scattered across continents and centuries, point to a truth larger than any religion. The borders we build, whether religious or social, are illusions. And love always presses against them.

So when someone like Zohran Mamdani emerges, a Muslim immigrant son who advocates for housing, healthcare, and international human rights, it should sound familiar. Not because he's quoting Jesus, but because he's embodying him. He's breaking down the same walls that humans have erected for millennium.

Healthcare: One Example of the Divide

And just in case you think we've moved past all that, consider:

Black Americans experience over double the uninsured rate compared to white Americans. They are more likely to be undiagnosed for chronic conditions, with diabetes going undiagnosed in 37% of Black patients compared to 28% of white patients. When they do receive healthcare, racial bias affects their treatment as studies show Black patients receive less pain medication and are referred for advanced care less frequently than white patients with identical symptoms and medical histories. Native Americans face even greater disparities, with an average life expectancy 5.5 years shorter than the general population. These aren't coincidences. They're reflections of ongoing systemic inequities.

Or consider the healthcare disparities tied to socioeconomic status. Lower-income Americans are five times more likely to delay or forgo medical care due to cost concerns. They are ten times more likely to report being in poor health than high-income individuals. The income gap translates directly into a longevity gap, with the richest Americans living, on average, 10-15 years longer than the poorest. A person's ZIP code has become one of the strongest predictors of their health outcomes and life expectancy, with differences of up to 30 years in life expectancy between neighborhoods just miles apart. This isn't natural selection. It's structural violence.

Finally, when it comes to gender women are systematically underrepresented in medical research. Only in 1993 did the NIH mandate the inclusion of women in clinical trials, after decades of research based primarily on male subjects. Even today, women make up just 33% of participants in cardiovascular clinical trials, despite heart disease being the leading cause of death for women. The result? Misdiagnosis, inappropriate treatments, and preventable deaths. Women are 50% more likely than men to receive an incorrect initial diagnosis during a heart attack. This isn't biology. It's bias.

More Walls That Divide

But these inequities extend far beyond healthcare. In every corner of our society, the same walls divide us, creating vastly different lived experiences based on race, class, and gender. Be it education, criminal justice, housing, environmental policy, or the workplace the established walls don't just divide us. They crush us. And they're reinforced every day by policies, practices, and prejudices that Paul would have recognized immediately as the same dehumanizing forces he confronted in his own time.

In the garden of humanity, these walls of separation cast long shadows, stealing sunlight from those who need it most. Yet beneath the soil, unseen networks of compassion connect us all, like mycelium threading through darkness, waiting for the rain of justice to awaken them.

Intersectionality: When Oppressions Multiply

What makes these inequities particularly devastating is their compounding, intersectional nature. Those who live at the crossroads of multiple marginalized identities don't just face the sum of separate disparities—they experience unique forms of oppression that multiply exponentially.

Consider the Black woman seeking healthcare who faces both racial bias and gender-based medical dismissal simultaneously. Or the undocumented person processing gender dysphoria trying to navigate the systems that threaten both their immigration status and their body. Or the disabled person from a low-income background encountering inaccessible facilities and financial barriers to care.

Kimberlé Crenshaw, who first coined the term "intersectionality," wasn't creating academic jargon. She was naming the lived reality that systems of oppression don't operate in isolation. They interlock and reinforce each other. A person isn't just Black or just female or just poor or just disabled, they are the entirety of their complex, beautiful, and vulnerable humanity. And when we fail to see that complexity, we fail to create solutions that actually work.

This is why Paul's declaration is so radical. He doesn't just name individual categories of division. He names the entire matrix of separation and declares that it has no place in the Christian community because "in Christ" they are overcome. He doesn't offer piecemeal reforms that address one axis of oppression while ignoring others. He points to a complete reordering of human relationship, one that encompasses the fullness of our identities without reducing us to them.

The borders we've drawn on maps and in minds are like chalk lines in a coming storm, temporary markings soon to be washed away by the inevitable rains of truth. What remains when these artificial boundaries dissolve? Only the bedrock of our shared humanity, weathered but unbroken. So how do we embrace this reality? How do we stay human in a world trying to thrive on division?

The Path Forward

No matter who you are, it starts by refusing the false categories. We name systems of oppression, not just out there, but the ones that exist in here.

From My Side of the Wall

If you look like me, or even if the system partially benefits you, you continue by confessing the ways you've benefited from the lines. And then choose another way.

This means reorienting our deepest instincts. In a world trained to see difference as danger, we practice curiosity instead. We question narratives that commodify human beings or label them as less than. We recognize when headlines or algorithms seek to intensify our tribal responses, and we pause. We breathe. We choose differently.

Let’s Educate Ourselves

We educate ourselves about systemic injustice, not from a place of guilt, but from a commitment to truth. Education isn't political, it's the prerequisite for wisdom. We study the histories we weren't taught. We learn the names of thinkers whose voices were muted. We trace the policies that created disparities, from redlining to mass incarceration, from border militarization to resource extraction. We follow the money to see who profits from division.

Let’s Amplify Marginalized Voices

We amplify the voices that power tries to silence. We pay attention to the wisdom that comes from the margins. We recognize that those who bear the weight of systemic violence hold insights that the comfortable will never access on their own. We center their leadership, not as tokens to replicate what we've been doing, but as prophets to help us see how the status quo is destroying all of us. We follow them into spaces of discomfort, knowing that growth happens at the edges.

But we don't stop at listening, we work to implement their solutions, trusting the curb-cut effect, the principle that when you put a ramp at the end of a sidewalk for a disabled person, it benefits everyone from the parent with a stroller to the mail carrier lugging a heavy bag to the runner who's less likely to trip mid-stride.

Let’s Build Just Economic Systems

We build economic systems that honor interconnection. We invest in credit unions rather than predatory banks. We support worker-owned cooperatives instead of exploitative corporations. We advocate for reparations, not as charity, but as the restoration of what was stolen. We create land trusts to ensure that housing serves community, not profit. We share resources as an act of resistance.

Let’s Practice Solidarity

We practice accompaniment, standing in unwavering solidarity with targeted communities. When Muslims face Islamophobia, we show up at mosques. When immigrants are threatened with deportation, we create sanctuary. When transgender youth are cast out, we surround them with love and protection. When Indigenous water protectors face violence, we put our bodies on the line alongside them.

That's how we tear down these walls of division.

From The Other Side of The Wall

What if you find yourself on the other side of the wall, if you've been targeted by systems that label you as 'less than,' especially if the assault on your person is multi-layered? Your response isn't confession. Your response is truth-telling. You don't need to soften your story to make others comfortable. Your lived experience isn't up for debate. You speak the truth, not as revenge, but as a testament to your full humanity.

Your resistance is holy. Whether through art, organizing, or simply surviving another day in systems designed to crush you, each breath you take is an act of sacred defiance. You refuse to be defined by the categories built to contain you. Your joy becomes a form of protest. Your thriving becomes prophecy.

And in community with others who share your experience, you create spaces of belonging that the dominant culture can't imagine. You build solidarity across differences. You practice mutual aid not as charity but as kinship. You cultivate wisdom that comes only from the margins. You remember ancestral practices that sustained your people through generations of struggle.

For All Of Us: Permaculture

And remember, this understanding of oneness isn't just a philosophical idea—it's embedded in the very way nature functions. And that's precisely where permaculture offers us a roadmap forward.

If we listen closely, the earth itself whispers secrets of belonging. In forest canopies and ocean depths, in prairie roots and mountain stones, the same message echoes: nothing stands alone. Everything belongs to everything else. The scattered stars above are mirrors to the scattered seeds below—seemingly separate, yet part of one vast breathing cosmos.

Permaculture, at its core, is a design system that works with rather than against nature. It shows us that the most resilient systems are those that honor diversity, interconnection, and balance. In a healthy ecosystem, there is no waste, only resources. There are no "weeds," just plants whose purpose we haven't yet recognized. The "problems" are actually solutions in disguise.

When we observe a forest, we don't see competition. We see cooperation. The towering trees create shade for the understory plants. The fungi connect the root systems, sharing nutrients across species. The animals disperse seeds. The decomposers turn death back into life. Nothing exists in isolation. Everything serves the whole.

This is what Paul was describing, a community where differences aren't erased but celebrated, where each person's unique gifts serve the collective flourishing. The early church was meant to be an ecosystem of mutual care, where resources flowed to those in need, where hierarchies dissolved into reciprocity.

Permaculture teaches us three ethical principles that perfectly align with Paul's vision: Earth Care, People Care, and Fair Share. We cannot truly care for people without caring for the earth that sustains us. We cannot properly tend the earth without ensuring just distribution of resources. And we cannot create fair systems without recognizing our fundamental interconnection with all life.

It’s All Connected

In a world fractured by exploitation and extraction, permaculture invites us to remember that healing happens through relationship. It's obvious that we cannot solve housing insecurity without transforming economic systems.

What's less obvious is our inability to effective respond to climate change without addressing racism. But climate change disproportionately impacts communities of color and low-income populations, creating what environmental justice scholars call "sacrifice zones" where pollution, extreme weather, and resource scarcity hit hardest. Studies consistently show that race is the strongest predictor of proximity to toxic facilities in the United States, even controlling for income and other factors.

When we examine historical patterns of environmental degradation, we find they follow the same pathways as colonization and racial oppression. The same extractive mindset that justified the exploitation of certain populations also justified the exploitation of land, water, and air. This is why environmental justice movements have always been led by those most affected—Indigenous communities, Black communities, and other communities of color who recognized that their struggles for dignity were inseparable from struggles for ecological health.

The same is true of our inability to restore watersheds without honoring Indigenous sovereignty. Indigenous communities, who comprise less than 5% of the world's population, protect 80% of global biodiversity on their lands. Their traditional ecological knowledge, developed over thousands of years in relationship with specific bioregions, offers sophisticated understanding of watershed management that Western science is only beginning to appreciate. From the Standing Rock water protectors to the Māori securing legal personhood for the Whanganui River, Indigenous leadership has proven essential to watershed restoration.

When we honor Indigenous sovereignty, we're not just making a political statement—we're acknowledging that the health of watersheds depends on traditional stewardship practices that were violently disrupted by colonization. We're recognizing that sustainable environmental solutions must incorporate the wisdom of those who maintained balanced relationships with ecosystems for millennia before industrial capitalism.

Building Resilience Through Diversity

Just as a permaculture garden creates resilience through diversity, a just society creates strength through equity. The monocrop and the monopoly share the same fatal flaw, they sacrifice long-term sustainability for short-term gain. They depend on external inputs rather than internal balance. They collapse at the first sign of stress.

But a permaculture community, like Paul's vision of the early church, creates redundancies and resilience. When one element faces hardship, others step in to support it. When new challenges arise, the diversity of perspectives generates creative solutions. When resources become scarce, the habit of sharing ensures that everyone's basic needs are met.

So we stand at the crossroads of what was and what could be. Behind us, the worn paths of separation. Before us, uncharted territories of belonging. The journey asks not for perfection but for presence, not for certainty but for courage. With each step toward one another, we remember how to walk as human beings again … feet planted in soil, hearts open to sky, hands intertwined.

Living that way is how we stay human.

Practices For Tearing Down Division

Here are three practices to help you tear down division, whether your day only allows for a 60-second reclamation reflection, your week a one-hour resistance ritual, or you find yourself ready for a full on rebellion against a world that assaults your humanity, I have something for you.