Art corner

Imagine the most beautiful painting you’ve ever seen. In the foreground, a gorgeous woman—nude—reclines on an ornate parlor sofa. She drops green grapes into her mouth, as if imagining an erstwhile life of luxury. The colors of a sunset—seen through the tall windows of her Parisian apartment—spill across the room, casting our subject in a lazy yet satisfied orange.

Now imagine a child approaches the painting. He looks. He ponders. He feels. Only to then pull the painting off the wall, strip the canvas from the frame, and use the painting as a blanket. When the museum patrons gasp in horror at the desecration, the little child says, “Please don’t judge me. For, you see … my parents died. They were tending the fields and got dismembered in an industrial grain shredder. Now I have no home and no family.”

Is this a metaphor? Perhaps. Or perhaps, to the child, YOU are the metaphor … for complacency!