WHEN I was very little, I went to a missionary school. The foreign ladies were kind; there was a tree at Christmas, And eggs at Easter, and many beautiful pictures For Sunday-school lessons well learned. I became a Christian And because the @3kakemono@1 that had been my mother's, And had hung in the @3tokonomo@1 of the room where she died Contained the picture of a Buddhist saint, I took it from the little box, where it lay rolled Together with my best @3kimono@1 and the @3obi@1 my mother had given me, And tore it across the face of the Buddhist saint, And showed it to the Sunday-school teacher for praise—which I received. Then I was a little girl; now I am an old woman, And have learned many things; among others That no religion is good, none bad; That no man and no woman is wholly good or wholly bad; That a little of that which is in the worst, As a little of that which is in the best is in me; For I have felt impulses of the vilest, As I have known moments of aspiration of the noblest In my own heart. And I know that God, If God there be, Buddhist or Christian, Will judge men and women by their strivings And aspirations more than by their deeds. And I know that God—if God there be— Will judge no man by the aspect of God he worships, Or by the saint he loves; or woman either. So gently I paste together the torn edges of the old @3kakemono@1 That was my mother's, the beauty of which In my youthful arrogance I destroyed. That was before the day I stood on the hill, To be alone a little with the pain in my own heart, And saw the mist rise from the valley below. A little at a time it rose, and the sun seemed to shine On that spot alone that was free from mist. Sun-gilded, shimmering, a world new-born, Seemed for the moment each tiny earth-spot. And my heart understood—and understands— The meaning of pain, and man's cruelty And bigotry and intolerance; each mistaking His own little earth-spot of mind and spirit For that world of many worlds and many universes Which only God—the sun of all suns—knows and illumines. But because I am a woman and ignorant I can not say what I would, But can only paste together with reverence The @3kakemono@1 picturing the Buddhist saint, And hang that by the side of the picture of the Christ on the Cross, Knowing that both are rays of God's sun-light, Shining through the valley of chaos and pain—this hell that men call earth; And that—it may be—slowly this mist, too, is lifting, Like the mist in the valley that day. |