Cabeza de Vaca part two:

lithograph of Cabeza de Vaca

First
a few questions:

What does it take for us
to treat each other as equals?

What must happen for us
to see the worth in each other?

Old world Spanish Explorer Cabeza de Vaca
discovered the answer.
Not sure his answer is comforting
but it is enlightening.

This he wrote in a letter to the King of Spain:

"Your Majesty,
such were the scenes in which
I found myself treating all
human beings alike.
I screw up my courage to confess it.
Perhaps it is the secret thing
which life has it
in itself to become -
a long, long march on the road,
meeting people,
thrown into relationships,
with them, having
to meet demands
often terrible..."

To know
Cabeza de Vaca's
story is to know
the terrible
reality of
starvation and
nakedness
in a strange land
where the only way
to survive
is to treat
the ones you meet
the way
you, yourself
want to be treated.

Perhaps this is
what it will take
for us to
treat all people
alike:
starvation...
nakedness...
everything we know
stripped away
before we
can see
the
value,
worth,
and beauty
in the other.