Love One Another

This is another story from my book, Rise, with Healing in Our Wings. It is available on Amazon and other internet sites.

His name wasn't Myron Harris, but that is what I will call him. He was one of my peers, a student at my high school. Myron was born deformed. With each agonizing step, he appeared about to topple over. "I didn't know scarecrows could walk," one of the school's fleet-footed football players said. Other taunts followed. The cruelty came easily. Myron had almost no control of his facial muscles; consequently, he drooled uncontrollably. He had other problems. His speech was a riddle, open sores covered his face and neck, and his body odor made one want to retch.

Even the most tolerant among the 30 other students with whom he rode on the school bus could not bear to sit by him, myself included. Nevertheless, each school day Myron braved rejection and made the 50-minute round trip to high school.

I do not know why Myron wasn't placed in a school for "special needs" youth. Perhaps some well-meaning social worker imagined he would benefit by being "mainstreamed." I also do not know why his parents or a guardian seemed to care so little for him.

What I do know, however, is that all the students who were Myron's bus mates--most of whom were Mormons--deserved an "F" in Christianity 101. Unquestionably, it wasn't easy to be Myron's friend. Still, hadn't I been raised to be equal to that challenge? And hadn't the bishop's son? And what about the clique of "good" Mormon girls who made merry by mocking his speech?

Many years after I graduated from high school, after college, and after the army, I saw Myron's obituary in the newspaper. It was a simple announcement of his passing, giving birth and death dates, and concluding "Private services are pending."

Sometimes in moments of introspection, when my body is surrendering to sleep, but my mind is paginating my past, I think of Myron--his tottering walk, his ceaseless drooling, his body odor. Only then, with the measured maturity that is the yield of the years, do I do what I lacked the will and wisdim to do as a callow teenager: I admire him, honor him, revere him. In the night solitude that cricks my conscience, I ask him to forgive me.

Myron Harris was a noble spirit of our Father in Heaven who, like us, had the courage to commit to this mortal estate. He followed the Savior. He held no warranty covering manufacturing defects or parts replacement. Midst mortality's slings and arrows, he soldered on. In that hard journey he offered others opportunities to join the compassionate army of Christ. A few enlisted; many did not.

The Savior's admonition to "love one another" is unconditional. It has no escape clauses. If there is a school bus in heaven, I want to sit by Myron.

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