Kids Playing Giddily

Kids Playing Giddily

(“Here there is neither Greek nor Jew, circumcised or uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave or free, but Christ is all and in all.” Colossians 3:11)

The lenses I used to use only saw the unabused
and kept the battered in the dark. I could see them
if I wanted
but only to point out their obvious flaws.
Did hide them or did they shrink from my view?
I could not help but think their invisibility was their own failing;
my blindness was sanctified by voices from emperors and pulpits.

Then yesterday I was wondering where all the lonely people go
when I refuse to see them in their fully grown human glow. Then yesterday
the light broke in and shattered the mirror I had been primping in.
I looked again and saw the cracks and splinters that had hindered
my access to the truth.

I thought I might be pulled into the uncrafted classrooms
that taught
nothing but invented stories about the minds behind the
eyes of the people I never wanted to see. But yesterday I
sat down in the back of the room and heard languages I
did not understand.

But the cadence was familiar. The emphasis on the third syllable
of a sentence or the rising of a voice after a question. My pilgrimage
had led me here so I decided to stay. They gave me a name tag
for my shirt and I wrote as plainly as I could. I learned these were
all graduates from a school just down the road from the
block I grew up on. Now I heard their voices and they sounded
like my neighbor’s kids playing giddily in the yard. I had to admit
I missed the playfulness and changed my lenses to see

Everyone who was different from me. And I joined them,
learned their language, and sat in their circle learning the
inclusive invitations of the spirit’s voice.