I was picking beans yesterday by myself. It was a gorgeous morning, chilly at first and then the sun got hot. It was a second picking of our second planting of beans, and I had two large bowls I could fill. I got to work.
The funny thing about picking beans is that, when you first move the leaves, you don’t see any beans. They blend in. Under the leafy roof is a house of stems, branches and vegetables that mimic each other, hide each other. At first glance there are no beans at all.
And then, something shifts. The light maybe. An adjustment of the eyes. And there they are. They stand out. They appear. As you move more leaves, more stems, they show up. A handful, a dozen beans that had been there the whole time. You just couldn’t see them.
I filled both bowls to overflowing. Had to go back with a third bowl, actually. There were a lot of beans. And bean picking is hard work. You lean over, kneel down. Your back hurts. It pulls at your leg muscles. And it takes a while to do. Two rows took me most of two hours.
So while I picked, I thought. About beans. And about people.
See, when my back hurt, I stood up and stretched. If I’d wanted to give up and leave the rest of the beans to rot in the garden, I could have (I didn’t, thus the third bowl). The point is, it was basically up to me.
But I know, in my head, that someone on this planet, today, was doing something, serving someone, picking something because they HAD to. And they couldn’t stretch when their muscles ached and rebelled. They couldn’t stop. There was a quota to meet–of produce picked or jeans sewn or men served. And if they didn’t do enough, they were yelled at. If they couldn’t get enough done, they might be beaten.
So I wondered, as I picked, what that would feel like. So I tried it. When my back hurt, I picked another plant, a few more beans, just to see what it felt like. It wasn’t even remotely slavery. It wasn’t unjust or even a semblance of the pain that men or women or children endured, just today. But I thought of them. And that is new to me.
I wonder if seeing people is very much like seeing green beans. At first, it can be easy to miss them. They hide in the everyday open all around me. I’m busy. I have a job to finish. Their problems don’t impact my life. My own back hurts, so I overlook them. And then, by some act of grace, something changes. The light shifts. The leaves move. And I notice.
And I cannot un-notice people. I want to, to be totally honest. But I can’t. There they are. Maybe a handful. Maybe a dozen. Maybe only one. But like the green beans, they are real, and they were always there. I just didn’t have the eyes to see them.
I’m way behind in the journey towards really seeing people. I know that. My sad little excuse for a social experiment in the bean patch won’t feed a starving child or free someone from their slavery. But it’s a start.
And wonder if the first step toward the doing someTHING is really about seeing someONE for the very first time. And then choosing to keep on seeing them and choosing not to turn away.
