I told a friend on the weekend that I believe the muse is always flowing. She does not discriminate. She does, however, pass on by if we do not turn towards her whisperings to let our creativity flow in whatever form we wish to express it.

I awoke this morning with an image of a pie and a memory of a description of how community is like a pie. The challenge is, often, there are some who want their piece of the pie who do not leave any pie for others.

Throughout the day, I kept coming back to the pie image, amidst a zoom and working on the marketing materials for my six month, ReEnvision Your Journey course I’m launching in May and a delightfully long and rich lunch with three women I haven’t spent a lot of time with but whose company I enjoyed immensely, I kept feeling the muse’s urgings that I write it out.

And so I did.

The Pie of All Humanity
by Louise Gallagher

In a world bent on othering,
we divide ourselves into slices,
forgetting, humanity is formed of one whole pie
born from a single human race.

We slice and dice,
casting aside pieces of the sumptuous whole
onto a refuse heap marked "unfit,"
discarded by those who claim the feast
is reserved for the few
deemed worthy
to sit at their table.

Fighting to keep the many from their feast,
they wield their knives 
with well-manicured hands,
hoarding the best parts
to preserve the richness of a banquet
laid out for an exclusive few.

Yet, in their quest to savour
only the choicest cuts,
they miss the pie’s true flavours:
its beauty lies in sharing,
in mingling tastes, aromas,
colours, and textures—
a masterpiece far surpassing any single slice
reserved for only those invited to the table.

We have sat at separate tables long enough,
heeding the few who decree
the pie cannot be shared by all.

It is time—
time to rise up from disparate tables,
to set a larger One
laid out with the beauty of all humanity
coming together
to enjoy the pie in its entirety,
where every slice enriches the many,
leaving none to feed on the crumbs 
left by the few.