Someone recently mocked my liberal tilt in politics by repeating the misquotation of Winston Churchill that goes: "If you're not Liberal when you're 25, you have no heart. If you're not Conservative when you're 35, you have no brain."
Churchill has always seemed to me to be
far more experienced and perceptive than to say something so
obviously shallow.
Truth can come from any source, any
party, right or left, often from the most unlikely places. I
constantly try to be receptive for that often-faint hint, that
smallest indication, sign, symbol, thought, clue, dream, suggestion,
awareness, that will enable me to resolve difficult problems or to keep me safe from catastrophe. Sometimes it is even
a child who points out to us not just that an emperor does not have
clothes, but leads us to where the true significance of a flower
lies.*
 |
| Raphael, 1506 |
Our good old myths and fairy tales
contain the idea that it is the stone that was rejected that has
become the headstone of the corner. It's often the unlikely,
simple son, who wins the treasure hard to obtain. The hero who slays
the dragon often comes from some unheard of place in the countryside
after all the known knights have failed, and he finds just the right
place to sink his sword so that he can kill the previously
invincible, loud-roaring, fire-breathing monster and can retrieve the
dragon's ill-gotten treasure hoard from the cave and wed the princess,
enabling the trees and flowers and animals to come back to life and the laborers
in the kitchen to regain their liveliness and joy.
* "I
suspect that the child plucks its
first flower with an insight into its beauty and significance which the
subsequent botanist
never retains." -Thoreau, Journal, February 5, 1852
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