“Empty as a pocket...Diamonds on the soles of her shoes”
~Paul Simon
With apologies to Paul Simon fans everywhere, for quoting these lyrics completely out of context, these words struck me recently while I was rolling down the Sunset Highway during a recent morning commute. While the consensus among Paul Simon fans seems to be the lyrics are about social class, with comment on the diamond industry in Africa, I wasn't thinking about anything political. Instead I thought "how many people feel completely empty (as a pocket) when they have gifts as valuable as diamonds that they either can't see, or deliberately have chosen to devalue?" What could be more rejecting of a gift than to place it on the bottom of your shoe and grind it into the street, with the dirt and the garbage – the bottom of a shoe, the spot that mothers are always saying "that's yucky" about.
Then I thought, when might anyone notice diamonds on the soles of someone's shoes, and it reminded me of the time, during my childhood Catholic school education, when I was kneeling in church and afterward the girl sitting behind me said "you should probably take those giant SALE stickers off the bottom of your shoes." Although these days, especially in the Portland area, it's a minority of people who actually spend any time on church kneelers, the metaphor of being in a state of surrender, or perhaps supplication, as being a time we allow others to see the gifts we are hiding from ourselves, caught my attention.
There are many reasons we might choose to deny the gifts we have been given. Perhaps from childhood we have received the message that our gifts are worthless. Maybe we are afraid of what positive things might happen if we embrace them. It's possible we have a core belief that it's somehow bad to shine, brag, glow, be joyful, or celebrate, if someone else (anywhere) is suffering. The fault with that piece of logic though is – how do you know? If I'm hiding my gifts so I don't outshine someone else, and they're hiding theirs for the same reason, aren't we just canceling each other out? And worse, contributing to the conspiracy keeping us all dim and in the dirt.
The great thing about diamonds is that walking on them doesn't break them down. Their resilience and brilliance are undimmed by how they are treated. They simply are what they are, and if they are buried for thousands of years they will be just as brilliant and valuable when they are finally unearthed.
In this season of gift giving, in combination with recent events that have had many Oregon and Washington residents literally and figuratively down on their knees, may we look for, notice and celebrate the strength, resilience and brilliance in others, and may we have the courage to dig our own gifts out of the dirt, clean them up, and yes, flaunt them. As Marianne Williamson points out "Your playing small does not serve the world."
~ © 2007, Linda Firth
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