Now it makes sense.
Weak men don’t want strong women.
Why step up, improve, or take responsibility when there’s always someone willing to accept the bare minimum—and defend you while you stay exactly who you are?
A woman with standards feels “difficult.”
A woman with boundaries gets labeled “crazy.”
A woman who expects effort is suddenly “too much.”
Let’s be honest—strong women aren’t the problem.
They’re just inconvenient for men who don’t want to grow.
So no, you don’t want a “real woman.”
You want someone easy to manipulate, easy to silence, and grateful for scraps.
Say that instead.
” Let difficulty
transform you, and it will.
In my experience,
we just need help in learning
how not to run away. ” 💫
– Perma Chodron
———————————-
“Don’t power walk. Saunter slowly in the sun, eating chocolate, and carry a blanket so you can take a nap.” ~ SARK
Mantra :: This is a journey – not a sprint – so I take breaks and reward myself along the way.
———————————-
Sure, I could imagine the worse case scenario and try to prepare for it. I prefer however to use my skills of imagination, my inner vision, to generate future details which bring joy to my world. Not to say one shouldn’t be prepared.
———————————-
I can think whatever I want without interference. They don’t get to crowd my present moment any longer. So refreshing!!
———————————-
People might question how I did it, what techniques do I use. I simply reply, resilience and perseverance. Sometimes inner fortitude is all that works.
———————————-
In the forest, when all goes silent, it’s the animals waiting to determine if predator is present, or just nature doing its thing.
Similarly, when all goes silent in the world, you can be certain the real danger is near, or the true bringer of change has arrived.
Pay attention.
———————————-
Seems the norm in this world is to “challenge” people.
I’ve been called challenger and adversary, with no intention of entering the game.
I’m here for expansion and knowledge, thank you very much.
———————————-
She wrote that women’s souls could speak directly to God without priests—so the Church burned her alive for heresy.
Paris, June 1, 1310.
In the Place de Grève, a woman was led to the stake. Marguerite Porete, accused of heresy, had spent over a year imprisoned, refusing to answer the Inquisition’s questions or defend herself before judges she didn’t recognize as having authority over her soul. Witnesses later described her calm demeanor—no screaming, no begging for mercy, no recantation. She faced the flames with a serenity that unnerved her executioners.
She died for writing a book that claimed a soul could unite so completely with divine love that it transcended the need for Church hierarchy, sacraments, or ecclesiastical mediation. The Church couldn’t tolerate that claim—especially from a woman.
Marguerite Porete was born in the late 13th century in Hainaut (modern-day France/Belgium border region). Little is known about her early life, but she became part of the Beguine movement—communities of lay religious women who lived together in prayer and work without taking formal monastic vows.
Beguines occupied a complicated space in medieval Christianity. They weren’t nuns bound by convent rules, but they weren’t ordinary laywomen either. They lived religious lives outside institutional Church control—which made Church authorities nervous.
Marguerite was educated, literate, and theologically sophisticated—unusual for a woman of her time.
Sometime in the late 13th century, she wrote “The Mirror of Simple Souls” (Le Mirouer des simples âmes) in vernacular Old French rather than Latin.
Writing theology in the vernacular was itself significant. Latin was the language of Church authority—using French made theology accessible to ordinary people, particularly women who hadn’t learned Latin.
But it was the book’s content that proved dangerous.
The Mirror of Simple Souls describes a mystical journey where the soul progressively lets go of attachments, ego, and even virtues until it reaches “annihilation”—complete dissolution into divine love. This “annihilated soul” becomes so united with God that it no longer needs:
Church sacraments
Moral rules
Priestly mediation
Fear of sin
Virtuous acts done out of obligation
Because the soul is completely aligned with divine will, it acts naturally from love rather than from external commands.
Marguerite wrote in dialogue form, with characters including “Love,” “Reason,” “The Soul,” and “Holy Church the Little” (institutional Church) versus “Holy Church the Great” (the mystical body of all souls united with God).
Crucially, she distinguished between institutional Church authority and direct divine relationship. “Holy Church the Little”—the hierarchy, rules, and priests—was necessary for beginners on the spiritual path. But advanced souls could transcend it through complete union with God. This was explosive theology.
The Church’s authority rested on being the necessary mediator between humans and God.
Sacraments administered by priests were required for salvation. Confession, penance, Church law—all of this presumed that people needed institutional guidance.
Marguerite was saying: at the highest spiritual level, you don’t need any of that. The soul united with God transcends institutional authority. Church authorities saw this as dangerous heresy. It suggested that mystics could claim direct divine authority superior to Church hierarchy. It implied that someone in mystical union might be beyond sin or moral law—a heresy called “antinomianism. “And it was especially threatening coming from a woman.
The Church insisted women needed male spiritual authority—priests, confessors, bishops—to guide them. A woman claiming direct divine relationship without male mediation challenged the entire gender hierarchy of medieval Christianity.
Around 1296-1306, Marguerite’s book was condemned by the Bishop of Cambrai. It was publicly burned, and she was warned to stop teaching her ideas. Marguerite ignored the warning. She continued circulating the book and discussing her theology. She sent copies to theologians and Church authorities seeking approval, but also continued teaching despite the prohibition.
This defiance was crucial. She had multiple opportunities to submit to Church authority, burn her book, recant her teachings, and avoid execution. She refused every time. Why? Because she believed—genuinely, deeply—that her mystical experience and theological understanding came directly from God. No earthly authority, not even the Church, could invalidate that divine relationship.
In 1308, she was arrested in Paris. The Inquisition began proceedings against her. During her imprisonment (which lasted over a year), she refused to cooperate with the trial. She wouldn’t answer questions. She wouldn’t defend herself. She wouldn’t acknowledge the tribunal’s authority to judge her spiritual state. Her silence was deliberate and theological.
She believed the judges—bound by “Holy Church the Little”—couldn’t understand the mystical theology of souls who’d reached union with God. Answering them would be pointless.
The Inquisition found her guilty of heresy. They declared her a “relapsed heretic”—someone who’d been warned before and persisted in error. The penalty for relapsed heresy was death by burning.
On June 1, 1310, Marguerite was led to the Place de Grève in Paris. Accounts describe her facing execution with remarkable calm—no terror, no last-minute recantation, no screaming as the flames rose. Observers noted this serenity. Some interpreted it as demonic possession keeping her from repenting. Others saw it as proof she’d achieved the mystical state she’d written about—transcendence of fear through complete union with divine love.
Marguerite Porete became one of the first women burned for heresy by the Inquisition in Paris. Her execution was meant to be a warning: women who claimed spiritual authority independent of Church hierarchy would be silenced permanently.
But her book survived. Copies circulated anonymously throughout the 14th and 15th centuries. Because Marguerite’s name was suppressed (she was executed as a heretic), the book was copied without author attribution. Monks, mystics, and scholars read it for centuries without knowing a woman had written it. Some copies attributed it to male authors.
The mystical theology was considered so sophisticated that people assumed a man must have written it.
In 1946, scholar Romana Guarnieri finally proved that Marguerite Porete was the author. The evidence included trial records and manuscript traditions connecting the condemned book to The Mirror of Simple Souls.
Suddenly, a text that had influenced Christian mysticism for centuries was recognized as written by a woman burned for heresy.
Modern scholars recognize The Mirror as a masterpiece of mystical theology. Its influence can be traced in later mystics including Meister Eckhart (who faced similar accusations of heresy).
Marguerite’s theology anticipated ideas that would later appear in Protestant Reformation critiques of institutional Church authority and in modern mystical and contemplative traditions.
Her story matters because: She claimed spiritual authority as a woman: In an era when women were required to be spiritually subordinate to men, she insisted her mystical experience gave her theological insight. She challenged institutional religious power: She distinguished between institutional authority and divine relationship—a distinction that threatened Church hierarchy. She refused to recant: Given multiple chances to save herself by submitting to Church authority, she chose death over betraying her spiritual convictions.
She was right about mystical theology: Modern understanding of contemplative spirituality recognizes the validity of much of what she taught. Her work survived despite suppression: Burning her body didn’t destroy her ideas—they circulated for centuries, eventually vindicated.
The tragedy is that Marguerite was executed for theology that, in different contexts or coming from a man, might have been tolerated or even celebrated.
Male mystics like Meister Eckhart taught similar ideas and, while investigated, weren’t executed. Her gender made her dangerous in ways male mystics weren’t. A woman claiming to transcend priestly authority threatened both religious and gender hierarchies simultaneously.
To Marguerite Porete: You wrote that the soul united with God needs no intermediary—and the Church killed you for threatening their monopoly on salvation. You refused to recant even when recantation would have saved you. You chose death over betraying your mystical experience and theological convictions. Your silence before the Inquisition wasn’t weakness—it was theological statement. You didn’t recognize their authority to judge what you knew through direct divine union. You faced the flames with the serenity you’d written about—the transcendence of fear through complete surrender to divine love. They burned your body. They tried to erase your name. They suppressed your book. But your words survived. For centuries, they circulated anonymously, influencing mystics who didn’t know a woman had written them. When scholars finally proved you were the author, your genius was undeniable. You were right about mystical union. You were right that souls can experience God directly. You were right that love transcends institutional authority. The Church that executed you eventually had to acknowledge the validity of mystical theology like yours. The ideas they burned you for are now recognized as legitimate contemplative spirituality. You died for claiming women’s spiritual authority. For insisting divine love was greater than ecclesiastical power. For refusing to let priests mediate your relationship with God. That claim cost you your life. But it couldn’t be silenced. Your voice, speaking across seven centuries, still insists: the soul united with Love needs no permission to speak directly to God. They couldn’t burn that truth. And they couldn’t burn your courage.
Source :: https://www.facebook.com/share/p/1LRQcyFnb1/?mibextid=wwXIfr
In 859 CE, a woman used her inheritance to build the world’s oldest continuously operating university—and 1,165 years later, it’s still educating students.
Her name was Fatima al-Fihri, and she understood something that would echo through centuries: the greatest investment isn’t in wealth or status—it’s in knowledge.
Fez, Morocco. The 9th century.
Fatima al-Fihri and her sister Mariam had just inherited substantial wealth from their father, Muhammad al-Fihri, a successful merchant who’d moved the family from Tunisia to Morocco.
They were young women with resources in a world where women’s choices were often limited. They could have lived comfortably, married well, secured their own futures.
Instead, they chose to build something that would outlast them by over a millennium.
Fatima envisioned a center of learning—a place where knowledge could be pursued, where scholars could gather, where intellectual and spiritual growth would flourish together. Not just for the elite. Not just for one group. But a place where learning itself was sacred.
In 859 CE, she used her inheritance to found Al-Qarawiyyin in Fez.
It began as a mosque with an educational mission—but it became so much more. Within decades, Al-Qarawiyyin was attracting scholars from across the Islamic world and beyond. Students came to study theology, mathematics, astronomy, medicine, philosophy, law.
The library at Al-Qarawiyyin would eventually house some of the world’s oldest manuscripts. The institution would educate some of history’s most influential thinkers, including scholars whose work would later influence European universities during the Renaissance.
Meanwhile, Fatima’s sister Mariam founded the Andalusian Mosque nearby—also with educational functions, also still standing today.
Two sisters. Two enduring centers of learning. Built with inheritance money that could have been spent on anything else.
Think about what that choice meant.
In 859 CE, Fatima al-Fihri looked at wealth and saw possibility. Not just for herself, but for generations she’d never meet. She understood that knowledge doesn’t die with us—it multiplies, spreads, transforms.
Every student who walked through those doors for the next eleven centuries carried forward something she started. Every scholar who debated in those halls. Every manuscript copied in that library. Every idea explored, challenged, refined.
All because one woman chose knowledge over comfort.
Today, Al-Qarawiyyin is recognized by UNESCO and Guinness World Records as the oldest continuously operating educational institution in the world. It became a modern university in 1963, but it’s been teaching students for over 1,165 years.
The same institution Fatima founded in 859 still stands in Fez, still educates, still preserves knowledge.
Think about that timeline. Al-Qarawiyyin was already ancient when Oxford was founded. It was 600 years old when Columbus sailed. It had been teaching students for over a thousand years when the internet was invented.
And it all started with a woman who inherited wealth and chose to invest it in something that would outlive her.
Fatima al-Fihri’s story isn’t just about building a university. It’s about understanding legacy. About recognizing that our choices ripple forward in ways we can’t predict or control—but we can choose what kind of ripples we create.
She chose education. She chose knowledge. She chose to create a space where learning could flourish.
And 1,165 years later, students still walk through those doors.
That’s not just architecture. That’s vision becoming reality across centuries.
Fatima al-Fihri never saw the Renaissance scholars who would study texts preserved in her library. Never saw the thousands upon thousands of students who would pass through Al-Qarawiyyin’s halls. Never saw how her choice would influence education across continents.
But she didn’t need to see it to believe it mattered.
She planted seeds of wisdom in the 9th century, and we’re still harvesting them in the 21st.
That’s what happens when you invest in knowledge. When you choose to build something greater than yourself. When you believe education is worth dedicating your resources, your vision, your life’s work to create.
You don’t just change your own life. You change the trajectory of countless lives you’ll never meet.
Fatima al-Fihri: 800-880 CE (approximate dates).
Founded Al-Qarawiyyin in 859 CE.
The institution still operates 1,165 years later.
One woman. One choice. One thousand years of impact.
Sometimes the most powerful thing you can do is believe that knowledge matters—and then build something to prove it.
She let go. Without a thought or a word, she let go. She let go of fear. She let go of the judgments.
She let go of the confluence of opinions swarming around her head. She let go of the committee of indecision within her.
She let go of all the ‘right’ reasons. Wholly and completely, without hesitation or worry, she just let go.
She didn’t ask anyone for advice. She didn’t read a book on how to let go… She didn’t search the scriptures.
She just let go.
She let go of all of the memories that held her back. She let go of all of the anxiety that kept her from moving forward.
She let go of the planning and all of the calculations about how to do it just right.
She didn’t promise to let go.
She didn’t journal about it. She didn’t write the projected date in her day-timer. She made no public announcement and put no ad in the paper. She didn’t check the weather report or read her daily horoscope.
She just let go.
She didn’t analyse whether she should let go. She didn’t call her friends to discuss the matter.
She didn’t do a five-step Spiritual Mind Treatment.
She didn’t call the prayer line.
She didn’t utter one word. She just let go.
No one was around when it happened.
here was no applause or congratulations.
No one thanked her or praised her.
No one noticed a thing.
Like a leaf falling from a tree, she just let go.
There was no effort. There was no struggle.
It wasn’t good and it wasn’t bad.
It was what it was, and it is just that.
In the space of letting go, she let it all be.
A small smile came over her face.
A light breeze blew through her.
And the sun and the moon shone forevermore.
~Rev Safire Rose~
Those entities who believe they own the whole of the world send in dancing puppets, beautiful, scantily clad succubusses, to wiggle and giggle and see if the cobra will rise from its basket and do a little weave and bob according to the dancing puppets will.
“Lust will be your downfall,” said the Most High to the warriors. Absolutely. A man who cannot control his mind, or his phallus, tends to “do the dance” and fall every time.
The hidden controllers have used the enslaved or agreeable Womb of Power against mankind for centuries, while causing great suffering for the Divine Feminine who tries, but cannot compete with the illusion, the alluring dance.
She doesn’t wiggle her hips like that.
She doesn’t dress to gain a rise out of the snake.
She’s busy building things, adding value to her soul, while he’s chasing smoke … looking for fire.
It’s too bad the Creatress doesn’t light his inner fire to match her efforts for creation … that he feels compelled to dance for the masters puppet, straight into fire of destruction.
Source :: https://www.facebook.com/share/p/1KPb7ZHGoU/?mibextid=wwXIfr
She was executed at 29 for refusing to accept a world where women had no voice. Her final words would echo for generations.
Japan, early 1900s. The emperor was considered divine. Women could not vote, own property, or speak in political spaces. Society was a fortress built on hierarchy, and questioning it was heresy. Kanno Sugako looked at this fortress and decided she would not live within its walls.
Born in 1881, Kanno defied every expectation placed on Japanese women of her era. While society demanded silence and submission, she became a journalist—one of the few women writing for public newspapers. She didn’t write about fashion or domesticity. She wrote about injustice. About the suffocating restrictions on women. About the impossibility of change within a system that treated dissent as treason.
Her words were dangerous because they asked dangerous questions: Why should half the population be voiceless? Why should one man be worshipped while millions suffered? Why should we accept the world as it is when it could be something better?
Kanno wasn’t satisfied with words alone. She joined radical political movements, attended banned meetings, and connected with anarchists and socialists who dreamed of dismantling the entire social order. In an era when most women couldn’t leave home without permission, she was organizing revolution.
Then in 1910, authorities uncovered what they called the High Treason Incident—a plot against Emperor Meiji himself. Kanno was arrested along with two dozen others. The evidence was questionable, the trial rushed, the outcome predetermined. Twenty-four people would be sentenced to death.
Kanno Sugako was the only woman among them.
The state wanted her to recant, to plead for mercy, to perform the expected role of the repentant female. They wanted her to cry, to apologize, to beg for her life in exchange for admitting she’d been led astray by men.
She refused every script they offered.
Instead, she wrote. In her prison cell, Kanno penned her autobiography and reflective essays that would be smuggled out and preserved. Her final writings revealed not regret, but absolute conviction. She saw her death not as a tragedy but as testimony—proof that some truths were worth dying for.
On January 24, 1911, Kanno Sugako was executed by hanging. She was 29 years old. As she walked to the gallows, witnesses reported she showed no fear. She had made her choice, understood its cost, and claimed her fate with startling clarity.
The Japanese government wanted to erase her. They banned her writings, suppressed her name, and hoped history would forget a woman who dared challenge divine authority.
But you cannot silence what refuses to be silent.
Kanno’s story survived through whispers, through secretly preserved texts, through generations of feminists who found strength in knowing someone had walked this path before them. Decades after her death, her autobiography was published. Her letters were studied. Her courage was recognized.
She became a symbol for Japanese feminists fighting for suffrage in the 1920s. For women demanding rights after World War II. For every movement that asked why women should accept less.
What Kanno Sugako understood—what made her both terrifying to authorities and inspiring to those who came after—was this: some systems cannot be reformed. Sometimes witnessing injustice without acting becomes complicity. Sometimes the only way to prove you’re free is to choose, even when the choice carries the ultimate price.
Her story is uncomfortable because it refuses easy answers. She wasn’t a martyr who accidentally stumbled into tragedy. She was a woman who looked at her options—silence or defiance—and chose defiance knowing exactly where it would lead.
History has given us many stories of women who survived against impossible odds. Kanno’s story is different. She didn’t survive. But her refusal to accept the world as it was helped create a world where Japanese women could eventually vote, own property, speak freely, and choose their own paths.
She paid with her life for freedoms she would never experience. That’s not a story with a happy ending. It’s a story with an honest one.
Every right we have today was paid for by someone. Some paid with their time, their comfort, their reputation. Some, like Kanno Sugako, paid with everything.
Her legacy isn’t about the methods she chose—those remain historically complex and debated. Her legacy is about the question she forced into existence: What are you willing to sacrifice for a world you’ll never see but others might inhabit?
She answered that question at 29, in a prison cell, with absolute certainty.
And her answer changed what was possible for every woman who came after.
I watched the woman steal three dozen eggs and a sack of potatoes while my shotgun sat loaded behind the door, untouched. It wasn’t the theft that froze me; it was the way she wiped her eyes before she ran.
My father built this farm stand in 1958. It’s nothing more than a weathered oak lean-to with a tin roof, sitting at the end of a gravel driveway that used to be surrounded by cornfields. Now, it’s surrounded by subdivisions with names like “Oak Creek” and “Willow Run,” where the only oaks and willows were cut down to pour the concrete foundations.
For sixty years, there has been a metal lockbox nailed to the center post. Written on it in fading white paint are two words: THE HONOR SYSTEM.
You take what you need. You put the cash in the slot. Simple. That box put me through college. It paid for my mother’s hip surgery. It was a testament to a time when a man’s word was his bond and a neighbor was just family you hadn’t met yet.
But times have changed.
I hear it on the radio in my tractor. Inflation. Supply chains. The price of diesel is up. Fertilizer costs have tripled. And out here, where the factories closed down a decade ago and the new service jobs don’t pay enough to cover the rent, people are hurting. Really hurting.
I’d noticed the light pilfering for months. A missing tomato here, a jar of honey there. I ignored it. If you’re desperate enough to steal a tomato, you probably need the vitamins. But last Tuesday was different.
It was a gray, biting afternoon. The woman drove a sedan that sounded like it was coughing up a lung. She didn’t look like a criminal. She looked like a nurse, or maybe a teacher—tired, wearing scrubs that had seen too many shifts. I watched from the kitchen window, sipping lukewarm coffee.
She stood in front of the stand for a long time. She opened her purse and counted coins. She counted them again. I could see her shoulders slump. She looked at the prices written on the little chalkboard—prices I had already lowered twice, even though I was barely breaking even.
Then, she did it. She grabbed the eggs. She grabbed the potatoes. She moved fast, terrified, looking over her shoulder. She didn’t check the lockbox. She just threw the food into her passenger seat and sped off, gravel spraying against the “Honor System” sign.
My neighbor, frank, a transplant from the city who likes to give me unsolicited advice about liability insurance, was pulling into my drive just as she left.
“You see that, Beau?” Frank yelled, leaning out of his shiny truck. “I told you! You gotta get cameras. Or shut it down. People today? No morals. They’ll bleed you dry.”
I looked at the dust settling on the road. “Maybe,” I said.
“It’s the economy,” Frank grumbled. “Makes wolves out of sheep. Lock it up, Beau.”
I went inside. I looked at my ledger. I was in the red. Again. The logical thing to do was to close the stand. Or put a padlock on the cooler. Frank was right. You can’t run a business on good vibes and nostalgia.
But I couldn’t get the image of that woman’s slumped shoulders out of my head. That wasn’t the posture of a thief. That was the posture of a mother who had to choose between gas for the car and dinner for the table.
The next morning, at 4:00 AM, I went out to the barn.
I collected the eggs. I sorted the vegetables. Usually, I wash the potatoes until they shine. I polish the peppers. I make sure everything looks supermarket-perfect because that’s what the new people in the subdivisions expect.
Today, I did the opposite.
I took the biggest, most beautiful Russet potatoes—the ones that would bake up fluffy and perfect—and I rubbed a little wet dirt back onto them. I took the eggs that were slightly different shades of brown, the ones that were perfectly fresh but didn’t look uniform in a carton, and set them aside. I took the prize-winning heirloom tomatoes and found the ones that were shaped a little weird, the ones that looked like kidneys or hearts instead of perfect spheres.
I walked down to the stand and nailed up a new wooden crate right next to the Honor System box. I grabbed a piece of cardboard and a thick marker.
“SECONDS & BLEMISHED,” I wrote. “UGLY PRODUCE. CAN’T SELL TO STORES. 90% OFF OR TAKE FOR FREE IF YOU HELP ME CLEAR THE INVENTORY.”
I filled that crate with the best food I had. The “dirty” potatoes. The “mismatched” eggs. The “weird” tomatoes.
Then I retreated to the porch and waited.
She came back three days later. Same coughing car. Same tired scrubs.
She froze when she saw the new sign. She looked at the pristine, full-price vegetables on the main shelf, and then at the overflowing crate of “ugly” food. She approached it cautiously, like it was a trap.
She picked up a potato. She wiped a thumb over the smudge of dirt I’d carefully applied, revealing the perfect skin underneath. She paused. She looked at the house. I stayed back in the shadows of the curtains.
She didn’t run this time. She took a grocery bag and filled it. She took two dozen eggs. She took a bag of apples I had marked as “bruised” (they weren’t).
Then, she stood in front of the Honor System box. She didn’t have much, but I saw her put a crumpled bill in. It wasn’t the full price of the premium stuff, but it was something. She walked back to her car, not looking over her shoulder, but walking with her head up.
Over the next month, a strange thing happened.
The “Seconds” bin became the most popular spot in the county. It wasn’t just her. It was the old man from the trailer park down the road. It was the young couple who had just moved into the rental property. They’d pull up, read the sign, and load up.
And the Honor System box? It started getting heavy.
They weren’t paying market price. They were paying what they could. Sometimes it was quarters. Sometimes it was a five-dollar bill for a haul that was worth twenty. But nobody was stealing. Nobody was running.
One afternoon, Frank stopped by. He looked at the nearly empty “Seconds” bin and the few remaining items on the main shelf.
“You’re losing your shirt, Beau,” Frank laughed, shaking his head. “I did the math. You’re selling Grade A stock as garbage. I saw you put those peppers in there. Nothing wrong with them. You’re running a charity, not a business.”
“I’m not running a charity,” I said, leaning on my truck.
“Then what do you call it? You’re letting them take advantage of you.”
“No, Frank,” I said. “I’m letting them keep their pride.”
Frank went silent.
“If I give it away,” I explained, looking out at the cornstalks swaying in the wind, “they feel like beggars. If I let them ‘buy’ the ugly stuff for cheap, or help me out by ‘clearing inventory,’ they’re customers. They’re helping me out. It’s a transaction between equals. They get to feed their families without feeling small.”
Frank looked at the box, then at me. He didn’t say anything else about cameras.
Yesterday evening, I went down to close up the stand. The “Seconds” crate was empty, swept clean. The lockbox felt heavy. I opened it to collect the day’s take.
Amidst the dollar bills and coins, there was a small, sealed white envelope. No stamp. Just my name, “Beau,” written in neat cursive.
I opened it. Inside was a twenty-dollar bill—crisp, new. And a note.
“To the farmer, I know the potatoes aren’t bad. I know the eggs are fresh. I know what you’re doing. My husband got a job today. It’s not much, but it’s a start. We made a pot roast tonight with your ‘ugly’ vegetables. It was the best meal we’ve had in six months. Thank you for feeding us. But mostly, thank you for not making us ask. We will never forget this.”
I stood there in the fading twilight, the fireflies starting to blink over the fields. I held that twenty-dollar bill like it was a winning lottery ticket.
The economists will tell you that the Honor System is dead. They’ll tell you that in a dog-eat-dog world, you have to lock your doors and guard your hoard. They’ll tell you that kindness is a liability on a balance sheet.
But standing there, listening to the crickets and feeling the cool evening air, I realized they’re wrong. The Honor System isn’t about trusting people not to steal. It’s about trusting that if you treat people like people, they’ll rise to meet you.
I pocketed the note and walked back to the house. Tomorrow is another day. I need to wake up early. I’ve got a lot of perfectly good vegetables to go ruin.
Because hard times don’t create thieves; sometimes, they just reveal who is hungry. And true community isn’t about watching your neighbor through a lens; it’s about making sure their plate isn’t empty so they don’t have to steal to fill it.
opensenseme 