A Shattered Unicorn

 

When I was in second grade, we had a show and tell day. We each put a precious object of ours onto the radiator by the window and then went down the line looking at one another’s beloved things. One girl had brought a porcelain unicorn her grandmother gave her. It was beautiful, it made me think of fantasy stories and strange enchanted worlds. And at some point, it broke.

I don’t know if it caught on my shirt, or if someone else bumped into it. The teacher made a big deal out of the destroyed unicorn, and no one confessed to knocking it over. Its destruction was the center of our classes’ life for multiple days, I know I began to feel guilty, not being sure if I’d somehow been at fault—and I wasn’t the only student worried that they may have somehow destroyed our classmate’s beloved thing—we’d hurt her! Eventually the class took up a collection and replaced the unicorn with a porcelain dragon.

              I don’t bring this up to brag on how sensitive of a little kid I was, but instead to notice a few things about what happened. Firstly, the harm was real, something precious was destroyed. Secondly, I may have done it, or I may not have—when we confess sins “known and unknown” that’s an example, unintended harm is still real harm. Thirdly, we made things right. There was a harmed relationship, our little classroom community couldn’t get back to normal until the little girl was made whole, so we banded together and did what we could to make things right.

              Imagine if we all took sins, small and large, slights, malicious intent, collective wrongs, as seriously as my second-grade class did. If we were sensitive enough to notice when people are hurt. If we took more seriously our unintended wrongs. If we deeply desired to make things right.