It is a perfect Saturday morning in Oneonta, Alabama. Clear blue sky, light breeze, low seventies. The only thing wrong with a morning like this is the difficult choices it presents on how to spend it.
But I shall began with sofa and coffee.
When I was three or four years old I loved band-aids. Back then band-aids came in all kind of cool colors with all kinds of designs. Superman. Mighty Mouse. Stars. Huckleberry Hound. But I only got a band-aid if I had been hurt. The hurt I usually suffered was a skinned knee resulting from getting in too big a hurry. I was always shocked and maddened by my fall, so it was a good thing that at least I might get a band-aid out of it.
The problem is that my mother is a nurse. She knew that for the wound to heal quickly and properly all the dirt and grit had to be removed before the band-aid was applied. That meant that the fresh, tender, bleeding scrape would have to be rubbed and scrubbed, which was a painful event, almost as painful as the original fall. But my mother knew that putting a band-aid over a dirty wound only contributed to the growth of infection, no matter how cool the band-aid was. For healing to take place, the dirt and germs had to be removed.
Our world has been covered with band-aids for too long. We are constantly falling and skinning some body part. Some band-aids have been quite cool. Foreign aid and treaties, alliances and accords. Nothing wrong with the band-aids. But underneath the band-aids the wounds are festering. The dirt and the germs were covered without the pain of the rubbing and scrubbing. Religious intolerance, human rights violations, economic injustice, tyranny, and governmental corruption were allowed to remain. They were just covered with band-aids, often decorated with stars and stripes.
It hurts to remove the band-aids and start over. It takes a gentle soul with a firm hand to reduce the pain.
The edges of some of the band-aids were lifted by a speech in Cairo this week by President Obama. It may have changed the course of history. Listen to it now if you haven't. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6BlqLwCKkeY
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Not really pertinent to the true meaning of the blog, but you also liked to walk around with a thermometer in your mouth. :-D
ReplyDeleteI agree with what you are saying. But I find it amazing that we think that nations can do what you suggest when individuals can't. We apply band-aids to our own problems and lives without cleaning out the grit. When people like your mother did, try to help us clean it out by holding us accountable, we ignore them. If we can't face our own problems directly, how can we expect the 'world' to?
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