Every New Year there is a Buddhist community center clean up. My wife (Kathy) found herself doing yard work with a woman (Lydia) whom she did not know well. The woman wore a ring with a large green stone. 

Kathy remarked: "Nice topaz!" 

The woman said "No, that is not a topaz, it is an emerald." 

Kathy realized an emerald that size is expensive. This thought must have registered on her face because Lydia felt obliged to explain. 

Lydia loves jewelry, but for the longest time no one ever gave her any. She even lived with a jeweler but he never gave her a single piece of jewelry. 

She owned an apartment building. After one of the tenants moved out, she rented to a man (Jim) who had a graduate degree but was unemployed. He was lazy and smoked marijuana most of the day. 

She introduced Jim to Buddhism and he began chanting. Shortly after that, he got a low-paying job cleaning the horse stables at a Federal Nature Reserve. 

One day he noticed a metal plate in the wall and asked what it was for. He was told that at one time the stables had been the place where "difficult" slaves had been kept in leg irons. 

Every time he went to clean the stables, he imagined the agony those walls had held. 

He felt depressed.

He felt oppressed. 

When he worked in the stalls, he chanted. He chanted for a healing. He began to conceive of a way to do it. 

He went to the Director and suggested that the Reserve host an event that honored the slaves that had been held there. He suggested that the songs, sounds, dance, and foods of Africa should be enjoyed on that day and that the Reserve should host the event. 

The Director thought it was a wonderful idea. He and the Board set a date for an entire weekend. They contacted the universities. They contacted Black Studies classes. They contacted churches. 

Everything was ready to go, when the community that neighbored the Reserve decided that they did not want any "Negroes" invading their own little piece of heaven. They had paid a lot of money to have the Reserve as their own backyard. They did not want to share their backyard with "Negroes." They began putting up fliers on the telephone polls that said that crime would escalate if the Reserve allowed "Negroes" into the area. 

Jim was called upon to articulate and defend the actions of the Reserve. He received death threats. Some of the board members who had supported him began to back away. The final straw was when a distinguished Professor of Botany in the community opposed the African festival. The whole plan for a festival began to unravel. 

The more Jim chanted, the more he knew he was right. He went to the home of the professor to try to explain his vision. The professor asked him to leave and told him that he would not have his property devalued by the lower classes. 

Jim felt defeated by evil. Instead of crying or smoking marijuana, he went directly home and began to chant until he could resolve this problem. The phone rang. He decided to let it ring, and he continued to chant. As soon as he knew exactly what to do, the phone rang again. The professor called to apologize. One of the professor's passions were the plants brought from Africa by slaves. He had a section of his garden dedicated to these plants. About a half-hour after Jim left, the doctor sat down to eat some of the African yams that had been grown in his own garden. They were delicious. It was at that time he realized how wrong he had been. 

The first time he called Jim there was no answer. He waited a bit, and then called again. After apologizing, he offered some of his own seeds to be planted by African-American children so that they might have a living connection to those who came before them. 

The festival was a great success. There was no crime. There were no accidents. Business boomed in the town that weekend. The people in the community loved the event — and learned a lot. 

When the Director decided to retire, he asked Jim if he would be willing to become the next Director. The vote went before the Board. It was unanimous. Jim became the next Director. 

When Jim proposed marriage, he gave Lydia her first ring. The center stone was a large green emerald. It had been his grandmother's engagement ring. 

He has since given her another ring. Simple gold.