Splinters In The Toe Of Humanity...

My house is undergoing a bit of a transformation.  Long overdue repairs and cosmetic updates, mostly, but it’s enough to feel the ripples throughout the daily flow.  In preparation for the new flooring that will come, we pulled up all of the 17 year old carpet that lived through 2 kids, 2 dogs, one cat, and a thousand spilled chocolate milks, magic markers, and muddy footprints. 

In the interim, this leaves us with rough plywood subflooring upon which to walk.  It’s a step in the process, so we’re not complaining about the disturbance.  However, we still have a household of active bare feet.  Bare feet + rough plywood = frequent splinters.  That’s the cost of progress and we have tweezers at the ready.

Usually, this is a problem with a simple solution.  Shine a light on the area and eject the offending intruder.  Sometimes, however, the offender is more persistent and will not leave easily but the evil has been identified, so the solution shifts to applying healing salve and monitoring the situation until the healthy body ejects the intruder on its own.

Hmm, this seems familiar, doesn’t it?

Unless you’ve been under a rock for the last several months – and, honestly, I can’t say I’d blame you – you are aware of some of the bigger disturbances happening in our bigger homes – our country and our planet.  Splinters in our foundations.

The thing about splinters is that they arrive unannounced.  Even if we know we’re walking on rough wood, we assume that the care in our steps will be enough to prevent attack.  But the splinters see our tender skin and get under it in effort to show their might and deliver their painful messages.  They think they’ve accomplished something but all they’ve really done is gotten our attention and caused us to shine a light on their hurtful acts so they can be ejected.  If they don’t go easily, a salve of love and healing will drive them out.

Likewise, when rough hateful groups show up and attempt to cause harm, the solution is to shine a light on them, identify them, and drive them out with a show of love and human healing.  That strips them of any power they may have thought they had and strengthens the true power – LOVE.

Sometimes, we are called upon in other ways to show our loving humanity.  In the past couple of weeks, Mother Nature descended upon us in the form of hurricanes and, instead of splinters, we were attacked with water.  Lives were lost, homes were lost, but LOVE was never lost.  In the hours and hours of news reports covering two hurricanes in a very short time, that’s where the focus lies – the loving humanity.

Businesses opened their doors to provide free shelter.  Families took in strangers.  Celebrities raised funds to support recovery.  Neighbors gathered food and clothing for strangers who lost everything.  A millionaire hunkered down on his private island not to save his things but to save animals.  You know what these news reports never talk about when reporting these acts?  Politics or religion.  Just humanity.  Maybe that’s the lesson here.  I hope the lessons carry forward.

Just like my human body will eject an ugly and annoying splinter that happens in the midst of my home's transformation, perhaps we should look to our humanity to eject the Ugly in our daily world.  Shine the light, folks.  Apply the loving salve  Heal.  Transform.