I like it when words or phrases can mean different things. When I first thought about a way to speak as an individual, but to remind us of our commonness I considered the many different grains in the universe.

First I considered there are all kinds of grains. There are wheat, barley, oats, rye, and other varieties of plants that all can be used to feed living things on this planet. Each grain has special characteristics which make it different from all the others and each of these grains can be used in the making of bread, which gives us life.

Yet, I then thought that there are more varieties of people than there are grains. Though there are a plethora, don’t you just love that word, of grains there is a limited number of them. I wanted to think of some thing in this world which could symbolize with a greater number, the vast variety of people in the world.

It was then I thought of another grain, the sands which populate the beaches of the world. Just as each snowflake is unique among all the snowflakes I think each grain of sand has a uniqueness different from all others and it would still be considered a grain of the all encompassing word “sand.”

I also thought that though there are numerous beaches throughout the world there is only one clan called the “McGrady-Beach” clan. We are few, but we are a combination of two families with one last name. We are part of the human race, but we are unique in the make up of our gene pool. So all those who are connected to the Beaches may have come from different places and different families, yet we all have something in common, a name which ties us together.

Again I want all of us to be able to recognize each one of us is unique among the billions of individuals from the past, present and also those yet to come, but we all populate the same universe. We, each one of us, have lived with different experiences which influence our personalities and though we may have similar character traits, we live those traits out in our own unique way.

So as I address all grains of sand in the universe I hope you can acknowledge that your are special, see Psalm 139, but you, we, are here together. And together we can use the resources we have been given or developed, knowledge, talents, and commodities, to further the good in this world.

We each play a special part on the beach which we have been placed, so let us celebrate our uniqueness, but let us also make way for others to be able to celebrate their own uniqueness as well.

Beaches unite, to bring glory to God.

“The glory of God is found in a human being fully alive.”

Pádraig Ó Tuama