Imagine

* This morning I stood beside the cove, looking down the channel as far as I could see, to where it disappears though the early morning mists and into a tunnel of wild willows. 

The rising sun is blinding from here, and if this is the only vantage point I choose, I might assume that that's where the waterway ends. But we who live here, have paddled down the creek many times over the years know that it goes on; through the willows, over shallow rocks, towards the sycamore grove, to the fallen tree where the Great Blue Heron nests. 

Standing on the dock, looking down at the surface of the water, all is not as it seems. The cove covers the secrets of its depths with surface ripples, reflecting the sun, the shape-shifting boats and the trees that overhang its waters, hiding what is underneath.

It's the same with people. If you're only seeing the surface, you'll never know what depths there might be beyond the ripples, below the shoals.
  
To uncover more of the cove's secrets, you would have to climb the bank to another, higher vantage point from where you would see the changing colors of the waters; the pale browns that hide the sand banks that protect the deep green depths of the channel.You can see the cove's sandy bottom from here, the shadows of fishes that graze here, and the wide expanses of pale yellows and grays of the shallow water. They are flecked with goose down this morning from the flock of a hundred or more wild birds that shelter here on their way to the flyways of Texas and beyond.

It's the same with people. To uncover the secrets we hold, the joys and sadness, triumphs and mistakes that make us who we are, we have to climb to a higher vantage point, to get a better view. Beyond the flecks of make up, beyond the colors and way beyond the languages we speak. 

And what you see from there is surprising. It's amazing, but what you'll see is that underneath the surface, we are all the same. We love, we cry, we rejoice we grieve. You are me, and I am you. What you can do, so can I. What you can feel, so can I. 

(There's one difference - if you love buttermilk, you are not like me! And its possible you can't stand chicken livers which make me different from you. But those are just the ripples.)

We are actually all one, all the same. But consider this for a minute: What if one of us does something really incomprehensibly terrible - something unimaginably dreadful, as happened in Paris last week. Are you still just like me? Am I you? Could I have done what you did when some evil made you slaughtered hundreds of innocents? Are we still all the same? Never!

But here's what I'm wondering. Is it possible that given the same set of circumstances, the same parents or lack of parents, the same nurturing or lack of it, the same beliefs or lack of them, the same disappointments and prejudices or lack of them, would I have acted as you did? 

Think so?  

How can that be, I'm so different! My generation preferred to make love not war! How is it possible I would do those things?

Free will. But obviously my free will is more evolved than the free will they brandished in Paris. In Oklahoma. In Newport and Colorado . . .  

When I peel back the next lay of my thinking, I realize all I don't know about how your free will was tooled, shaped by life and other people. I may never know, but all l I can think is: What If. What if my freewill had been subjected to the same tides, the same storms, teachers and circumstances as yours was? 

I don't know the answer. But I do know this: If I'm ever tempted to judge you (which, in my weird humaness, could happen) I hope I'll look deeper, beyond the storms and the ripples. And even reach out if you'll let me.

I'm not advocating any of us packs up and hops the next plane to Syria to save the unfortunates. We know that doesn't end well! So, maybe I'll just start with the neighbors. Like one I know of whose side door on the garage bangs all night in the wind because he hasn't closed it. Seriously? Was he born in a barn? I'll have to look deeper before I start bleating and picking up the phone at 3:00 a.m. Maybe he really was born in a barn? That would explain it. Now I understand! Perhaps I'll bake a buttermilk pie and deliver it - with a padlock dangling off the plate.

Whatever. Tolerance, right? I'll think about that some more -  right after I grab Miss Kitty, who's just made a puddle on the door mat because she's feeling disenfranchised and ignored because I'm taking too much time on this blog. So, I grab the dish cloth and wave it around like a machete yelling, Scat Cat! OUT!  Sounds like Shakespeare, doesn't it? Out damn spot! Bomb the hell out of . . .
no, not you Miss Kitty, I'm just repeating something I heard! Sorry! Too late. Forgiveness is not her strong point. That cat can hold a grudge like no one I've ever known! 

Forgive me, I digress. It's Thanksgiving, and one of the things I'm truly thankful for is having friends like you who let me express my thoughts and free will in blogs like this. 

I hope you have a wonderful, good-eating Thanksgiving, surrounded with friends and people you love. As I will. 
And I hope you'll never stop Imagining how good things are, how good people are, and how lucky we are to be alive and living free.
Take care!