Page 222, The Secret Life of Bees, Sue Monk Kidd:
The man holding the shovel handle walked right up to the truck bumper and stared at the boys with that same half smile, half sneer I had seen on T. Ray 's face a thousand times, the sort of look conjured from power without benefit of love
The observed Lily and T. Ray she says her father, before she walked away.
The story contains many such casual gems that are wise, but are never without a certain humor:
How do we take the claim that power has to be nice?
There is a deep-seated longing for that seems inherent in us, and we all react once outraged if power is nice to us. Whether authority or God or fathers, we protest, we swear, we mourn. Only when we have just given up and no power expect more kindness, only then will we defend ourselves. And then it can be if we resist, finally, that we can be even be friendly and powerful.
But we prefer to give but not to the hope that powerful people are also friendly people, and that life, destiny, providence, or God, is very kind to us. For it could be that we despair completely without hope. Because we can fight back, unfortunately, not always.
Heidi says 2.0: I believe in the good and powerful in my goat.
0 comments:
Post a Comment