the deepening ground

“First of all, if you learn a simple trick, Scout, you’ll get along a lot better with all kinds of folks. You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view . . . until you climb into his skin and walk around in it.“

Atticus Finch, To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee

Perhaps the greatest American novel, To Kill a Mockingbird reminds us just how little we really understand others. Are we willing to climb into someone else’s skin and walk around in it for awhile or are we quick to shed innocent blood? It’s far too easy to dehumanize, to cancel, to erase those inconvenient “others” who threaten our way of life. It’s time to do the hard things: to re-humanize, to open our eyes and hearts, and choose life. Our hatred only spreads the stench of death and I have no interest in that aroma.

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Perspective Glass

by Vincent H. Anastasi 2019

May we never willingly choose blindness,
failing to see
these bodies and limbs,
hands and fingers,
faces and eyes
together in this hallowed space,
the voices silent as a photograph;
never yield to the convenient temptation
of dehumanization
whose rooted seed
conceives atrocities
and labors to shed innocent blood.