As human beings, we love to sort things into this goes here, that goes there piles of life. We learn it from an early age, I suppose, when in kindergarten, we are asked to decide which of these things does not belong? We learn that the right answer is that red triangle in a row of blue squares. It’s not long before that philisophy becomes a way of assessing people who are also the red triangles among the blue squares – who speak or think differently, and most of all look a little different from the rest of us. Of course Jesus – and the disciples too – were red triangles. And so was Mary and many of the people who stand as examples of our faith. Because, as we soon learn, it’s the red triangles that make life better, that change society, that innovate and question. Without them, we would just be a boring old row of rule-following, group-adhering blue squares, and we all know the inherent danger in that.
Here’s a funny story that I read recently in Atlantic magazine: it’s a bit tongue and cheek, but ultimately, it’s about being put in a box, about being assumed to be one way when you really aren’t, and about how we should be careful not the underestimate those red triangle. The author of the piece, Mark Bowden, emerged from what he called “the dumb kid’s class” to write BlackHawk Down, a finalist for the U.S. National Book Award in 1999.
http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2012/06/dumb-kids-8217-class/8981/
Here’s a funny story that I read recently in Atlantic magazine: it’s a bit tongue and cheek, but ultimately, it’s about being put in a box, about being assumed to be one way when you really aren’t, and about how we should be careful not the underestimate those red triangle. The author of the piece, Mark Bowden, emerged from what he called “the dumb kid’s class” to write BlackHawk Down, a finalist for the U.S. National Book Award in 1999.
http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2012/06/dumb-kids-8217-class/8981/
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