Perfect/Not
Perfect
“In
nature, nothing is perfect and everything is perfect. Trees can be
contorted, bent in weird ways, and they are still beautiful.”
Alice
Walker
My friend, Ellen, and I
talked over lunch one day this week about how strange our group of
friends is—all of us could rightly be described as weird. As a
matter of fact, every human being I know has some sort of bizarre
quirk. Like trees, we are imperfect and yet perfect. How boring the
world would be if everyone looked, and thought, and spoke the same.
There is a tree in my
neighborhood, down the hill from my house, that is one of the few
remaining live oaks that hasn't been gutted in the middle by the
power company. It must be at least two hundred years old, and gnarled
in every possible way. I think of her as a crusty old grandmother—she
has heaved up the sidewalk and broken the pavement of the street next
to her. You likely wouldn't call her beautiful, though in her knobby
excellence, she is. Whether fetching or not, she is revered, even
considered sacred; no one would dare to cut her down to save the
sidewalk or the street.
Remember the outrage when
an angry Alabama fan poisoned the oak trees on the Auburn University
campus, the Toomer's Corner oaks? The entire state was in an
uproar—the Alabama football team made replacement of the oaks a
fund-raising priority because they, too, were incensed. We are passionate about our trees. So, why is it so difficult for us to feel
that way about other human beings? So what if they're different from
us? So what if they speak and think oddly, according to us? What's
the big deal if their skin color or nationality is other than our
own. They are imperfect and perfect just as they are, as are we. The choice we have to make is whether to use our differences to separate and
categorize others, or to bring them closer so that we can learn from
them. They are sacred—flaws and all.
In the Spirit,
Jane
No comments:
Post a Comment