“Full many a flower is born to blush unseen.” This line from Thomas Gray’s, “Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard” exhorts us to honor the lives of ordinary people. While Fate may turn a blind eye upon the many, the poem reminds us that Nature bestows a gift to each of us. Our work is to discover that gift in ourselves and to honor it in others. Failing to accomplish either task impoverishes us and makes us blind to the riches of the planet.
One man, Shella Monteiro stopped by the side of the road on a warm day in Brazil to talk to a man seated in the dust. The stranger was busy scrawling poems on scraps of paper, so Monteiro asked if he could read one. The man, Raimundo Amanda Sobrinho, consented and offered up not one but several poems which Monteiro read. Touched by them, he ask if he could take the poems with him, and Raimundo Amanda Sobrinho nodded that he could.
When he got home, Monteiro decided to share the poems with others and created a webpage comprised of Raimundo Amanda Sobrinho’s work. Soon, the site had 40,000 visitors. Among them was a publisher who offered to collect the pieces as a book. Next Raimundo Armanda Sobrinho was discovered by his long lost brother, and the homeless man was homeless no longer. (The Week, March 7, 2014, pg. 2)
Such is the power of words. Such is the talent of Shella Monteiro. He opened his heart to man squatting in the dust, a man lost in the wasteland of indifference. Having done so, he gave the world a poet.
We live in a universe comprised of stardust and diamonds. When we close our eyes to its wonders, when we fail to see its glimmer reflected in ourselves and others, we invite the dark. That is not our purpose As it was decreed in the beginning, we must, “Let there be light.” (Genesis 1:3)
(Courtesy of www.ayvain.com)
