Categories: uncategorized
Tags: faith
Date: 21 February 2006 15:33:00
Improvising for a sunday school I didn't know I had to run, I was inspired by having read Amazing Grace to Rosie the previous night, and I began relating the story to the children, many of whom related to the race and sex discrimination elements. Then I proposed that the children, like Grace, could be anything they wanted to be. There was the usual flurry of disagreement. No, Fiona, that's right, you can't be the moon. No, Sally, or the sun. Well done. But you could be anything anybody else could be. Yes you could be a ballet dancer, Isaac, if you wanted. Yes you could. No, you don't have to be. Don't cry, it's okay.
One little girl had squabbled and giggled along with the rest but was the only one who didn't raise her hand when I had finally convinced all the others that they could be whatever they wanted. I asked very gently about this but it was clearly something she didn't want to talk about. Afterwards, as I gathered up the pictures of footballers, cooks and racing drivers, I found hers folded neatly on her seat. It was a highly stylised drawing of a very tall, very thin, very white woman, with a huge smile and half a crayon's worth of lipstick. She was the exact physical opposite of the little girl who left it there, who was a small, twinkly black girl with happy, dancing eyes and a fast mind.
"I want to be beautiful", it said. I think it's the saddest picture I've seen in a long time.
Paul Simon, Train in the Distance