There was a boy who grew up to be a young man. He donned not only a small stub of a moustache under his nose but also a set of paintbrushes and an assortment of paints and canvasses. He put his heart into his painting, feeling a connection to a place inside of himself that he knew was not his alone, but part of a greater whole.
And as he tried to pan his wares, like a ragman pushing his cart in Beverly Hills, he was met with constant rejection. Soon he painted less and angered more. And soon the spark of light inside him was buried so deep under the darkness of his anger that he forgot all about it; now life was not something to join in loving harmony but something to conquer and crush, for how could anyone feel the spark that he was not allowed to possess himself?
And soon he realized that if you covered enough sparks with anger and fear, you could not only make people forget that there was a sun behind the clouds but you could make them think that there was no sun at all and that the only hope for any sense of triumph would be to exert control over the clouds themselves.
And he was a great spark extinguisher. He scared people by tightening the screws on the economy. He created enemies who he convinced were trying to take control of the people’s clouds, having them so conditioned as to forget that no one really wanted a cloud in the first place. And he took lands from others, convincing his dampened army that possessions and pieces of dirt and marching in synch would somehow fill the empty space which their inner flame used to occupy. Instead of joining their sparks together to light up the world, they joined their clouds together and covered it with darkness and tears.
And soon not only hopes and dreams were extinguished, but millions and millions of people as well, all because one man wasn’t supported in turning his spark into a roaring bonfire.
I mourn the death of Adolph Hitler. I mourn for every man–living or dead–who is filled with a cloud, separating him from the bright sun above and within. A great man like Adolph Hitler could have united all the sparks and burned this world brighter than it had ever shone. Instead he burned it down with the gasoline of fear and hate, leaving black stains on white pants of generation after generation who sit down on the charred earth that has yet to fully heal…and share her spark once again with all who reside on her.
REFLECTION:
When did you lose your song? When did you lose your dance? When did you lose your story? When did you give up on creating your art? When did you lose your spark?
A spark is never extinguished; even damp matches can be reignited with enough heat.