Don't Worry About The Smell

Do you remember that little poem that goes:

We have the nicest garbage man
He empties all the garbage cans
He's just as nice as he can be
He often stops and talks to me
My mother doesn't like his smell.
But then, she doesn't know him very well!
Isn't it sad that so often we make our judgments about people from foolish and artificial reasons like this? How quickly we place people in categories: they are blonds, or they are Jews, or they are black, or they are midgets, or they are Catholics, or they are Chinese.

Suddenly our world begins to fill up with walls...walls of differences, and we find ourselves treating people differently because they are behind this or that wall.

And yet every last one of them feels the cold, or gets a fever, or is allergic to pollen. There isn't a person behind those walls who doesn't get hungry, or get sick, or get lonely and depressed at times. Every single soul, regardless of color or creed, or cultural orientation, feels pain when stuck by a pin, or is injured in an accident.

Robert Frost caught the significance of this as he wandered through the fields surrounded with stone walls, and wrote:

"Something there is that doesn't love a wall,
That sends the frozen ground‑swell under it,
And spills the upper boulders in the sun;
And makes gaps even two can pass abreast."

And as he wonders why walls seem so important in his world, he hears the old cliche, "Good fences make good neighbors." and he goes on to say:

"Spring is the mischief in me, and I wonder
If I could put a notion in his head:
“Why do they make good neighbors? Isn't it
Where there are cows? But here there are no cows.
Before I built a wall I'd ask to know
What I was walling in or walling out
And to whom I was like to give offense.
Something there is that doesn't love a wall,
That wants it down."

There are so many times when I am not sure I really want to "love my neighbors" (let alone my enemies). Sometimes they "smell" so bad! But Jesus didn't seem to give me any choice. Here and there, we find beautiful examples of people who have broken the terrible pattern of vengeance, by not only forgiving someone for wrong‑doing, but going the second mile of reconciliation.

John Morley once commented on just such an example when he wrote: "There was no worldly wisdom in it, we all know. But then what are people Christians for?"