Today, I am praying for guidance in a seemingly tempestuous world, a world that is consumed with credentializing every aspect of life, proving or not proving what is and what is not.
Do we really have the right to judge others by our personal criteria? What are the metrics of success we expect everyone around us to adhere to? Perhaps we should drop our perceptions of what we expect of others and learn to look at people as individuals with gifts, talents and skills that have been developed differently than our personal ones and learn to accept the person as a unique individual and not depend on some mundane paper trail of life.
Do our preconceived perceptions and societal norms rule our decision making process? Can we actually look at someone without these preconceived quantifiers and actually see the person? Are we interested more in social/societal value or in the human/spiritual traits standing right in front of us…questions of life to ponder on a regular basis?
I challenge you to a task, take a dollar bill out of your pocket, loot at it, admire it, look at the picture of the President and pay appropriate homage to that picture. Now, recognizing the power of the piece of paper you hold in your hand, very gently and with reverence, tear it into pieces, feel the feelings as you tear up and icon of wealth and security. Let it put itself back together, stand there and watch it struggle to become whole again. I’ll wait patiently. Eventually, you will pick up that dollar bill and try to tape it back together, and make it acceptable in everyone’s mind, but it’s still just a piece of paper that holds some astronomical power and control in our lives.
Without human hands and minds that piece of paper doesn’t exist or cannot exist, it is something created by man, with this piece of paper you are holding in your hand is created by man, the gift and the blessing is the person standing there in front of you that wrote this and shared it with you, by whatever means possible and probable.
As we prepare to walk through these days we have on this earth, it’s my prayer for us to look at people just as they are and not expect anything else. The blessing is the human contact we share, one to another, where every aspect of a person’s reality and life is shown. “The proof is in the pudding, not the pudding in the proof!”
