Seeing Good
With Quotes from On the Back of the North Wind by George MacDonald
I recently had the chance to consider the focus I occasionally put on the negative parts of people’s character. Sometimes I catch myself honing in on little foibles and missing the beauty and charm of the person as a whole. This is worse in those who are closest to me, like my kids. Where I should see innocence and potential, sometimes I see a mess waiting to happen or a lack of care leading to injured siblings. One of my kids recently spilled their chocolate milk 4 times in one day. Now, I am careful to pour small cups for just that reason, but 4 times?! The thing about that is, when I was young my family called me spilly Jake for years, so I know my daughter comes by it honestly. But in the moment after the 4th time at the end of a long day I had a really hard time thinking about it that way and I instead snapped at her in a way she didn’t deserve. This small example, among others, led me to reflect on the way we see things.
In the novel “At the back of the north wind” by George MacDonald, the north wind takes a boy on several nighttime adventures, flying him all over England. On one such outing, the north wind scares a nanny watching over a child by appearing as a large wolf. The boy, Diamond, asks the north wind why she would scare someone like that and wouldn’t she have scared the little girl too? The north wind explains that the nanny was not a good person, and so while the nanny could see the scary wolf, the little girl could not. She explains:
“Why should you see things that you wouldn’t understand, or know what to do with? Good people see good things. Bad people, bad things.”
Diamond asks her, “Then you are a bad thing?”
“No, for you see me Diamond dear.” said the girl, and she looked down at him and Diamond saw the loving eyes of the great lady gleaming from the depths of her falling hair. “I had to make myself look like a bad thing before she could see me. If I had put on any other shape than a wolf’s, she would not have seen me. For that is what is growing to be her own shape inside of her.”
The entire novel is a masterclass on seeing the beauty and innocence in children specifically, but it can be applied to everyone. If we focus on the negatives we are allowing those negatives to transform us into wolves. But if we see things as they are, not ignoring the negative nor the positive, we can see people as children of God. There is a divine spark in every person with whom we interact, and we can participate in stoking that spark into a beautiful roaring divine fire or smothering it into a heap of ashes. When we choose the former, we also bolster our own little flames. But when we smother, we also shrivel our own spark and prevent ourselves from reaching our full potential. We cannot reach our full potential unless we give ourselves fully to God, and recognize and nourish the Godly nature of all those around us. This is easier said than done, but we should consider it our duty to practice it as much as possible, and to reflect on our performance so we can change where needed.
Audio version:
https://open.substack.com/pub/wisdominbestbooks/p/3-seeing-good?r=4l1y9b&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&showWelcomeOnShare=true