That extra stretch...

I had to take my husband in for gum surgery yesterday (didn't happen, long story, he's fine). He was chuckling as he pulled into the parking space, and when we got out of the car he motioned me over to show me this plate on the car next to us.

I photographed it with my cell phone and sent it to a dentist friend (who was duly amused) and then thought, well, who knows, and took a shot with my camera as well.

This morning I was going through the images I managed to capture in the city yesterday before my camera battery died, and this one surfaced again. Funny, I thought, and moved it into my humor folder. And then I looked at it again and realized that just above the windshield wiper, barely visible, gray-on-gray, is the word "ATTITUDE."

OH! I get it! This isn't just funny dentist humor; there's also something telling us this needs to be a way of life; that just "being open to what comes" -- or to what is, for that matter -- isn't enough. We need to stretch that extra bit, to open WIDE, to risk that slight dislocation of the mental jaw that the snake does so easily in order to accommodate a broader understanding of the divine value that infuses all creation; to step, sometimes, out of our comfort zone and enfold ALL of humanity, not just SOME humanity, in the divine embrace of compassion.

I'm sorry -- it's the punny spirit of my father in me -- I just have to say this: That's the only way those gaping inner cavities in us are ever gonna get filled. (I know. OUCH!)