Remarks:
* We changed the title of the story for "Peter’s Story."
* We told up to the part that is in bold; we then moved on to the second stage of the lesson.
Peter's life has been very difficult.He was born with one leg slightly shorter than the other.
BOLÇONE, Maria Ida Bachega.Life taught, Editor EME.
His body leans a little to the right when he walks.
He would love to play football, but runs with difficulty and his colleagues do not accept him on the game.
Lately, he has received many jeers and nicknames.It has been very difficult to accept his physical limitation; all the jokes and nicknames that he receives are like stones that are thrown at him.
Once, when he went to the blackboard to solve a math problem, he heard a colleague calling him roughly by a nickname and asking him to leave because his body hided a part of the blackboard.
MrsAdams saw Peter’s eyes fill with tears. She noticed the disrespect his colleagues were treating him for some time.She waited until Peter finished the exercise and sat down.She drew the attention of the class and said:
- Today we will have an observation lesson.You know that we must look closely at everything around us.If you look carefully, we discover things that often go unnoticed.
She uncapped a vessel containing uncooked rice. She distributed a small portion for each student and asked them to observe the rice grains and discuss what we noticed about them.We were surprised by what we saw: some were lighter, some darker, some were more opaque, others brighter.There were more elongated grains and shorter ones.Some were defective, broken.
MrsAdams said:
- Our inattentiveeyesoften fail to notice the details of things that we see daily.It is harder still to know the cause that made the rice grains different.This would require further study.
"Note also that people are different from each other.Some are perfect and others have physical imperfections.There are short and tall people, intelligent and mentally disabled; with white, black or yellow skin colour, some with black or yellow hair or even redheads.There are so many differences that would be impossible to enumerate them.To find out why we are different, it would be necessary to make a deeper study of life.One thing we can be sure: God is the creator of all that exists and all of us.Since He is the supreme intelligence, everything in Creation has a purpose. Quite often due to our ignorance of God’s laws, we can’t understand.But we must have deep respect for everything that comes from God, for all the people around us, whatever appearance they have, remembering that the value of people is not only just measured in their appearance but on their qualities and virtues as human beings."
MrsAdamsdidn’t have to say, but we had fully understood her message in relation to Peter. Weshould all show respect to him.
From that day forward, nicknames and jokes began to fade from our class.Before that we had not realized that, even without malice, were hurting someone.
I learned at school how important it is to understand life as established by God, and to evaluate whether what we are doing is benefiting or hurting others.
Translation: Carolina von Scharten, London, linked to BUSS - The British Union of Spiritist Societies