I’m reading the book A Promised Land by Barack Obama.
In the first pages I came across this passage about the groundskeepers who work in the Rose Garden.
It’s beautiful writing about, well, a beautiful place.
“Each time I walked down the colonnade or looked out the window of the Oval Office,” wrote Obama, “I saw the handiwork of the men and women who worked outside. They reminded me of the small Norman Rockwell painting I kept in the wall, next to the portrait of George Washington and above the bust of Dr. King: five tiny figures of varying skin tones, workingmen in dungarees, hoisted up by ropes into a crisp blue sky to polish the lamp of Lady Liberty. The men in the painting, the groundskeepers in the garden - they were guardians, I thought, the quiet priests of a good and solemn order. And I would tell myself that I needed to work as hard and take as much care in my job as they did in theirs.” (pp. 4-5)
I thought about this passage after Jhoan walked over to my table and showed me a letter Juan had written/created for him.
It’s a thank you letter.
It was written/created out of pure and simple kindness.
How we all need to plant and grow pure and simple kindness in our world today, huh?
Juan did.
Juan does.
Jhoan too.
For, you see, Jhoan is Juan’s translator.
With Jhoan, who is bilingual, Juan, who speaks only Spanish because he is a newcomer to the United States from Colombia, would be lost in a forest of words and phrases that he does not understand.
As I read Juan’s letter to Jhoan, as I marveled at it’s creation, it dawned on me like a sunrise on my way to Berea Elementary School early each morning that Juan and Jhoan are like those groundskeepers in the Rose Garden.
They are guardians.
They are quiet priests of a good and solemn order.
I want to be like them.
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