One October, a gardener was completing the harvest from the garden: picking the last of the tomatoes, beans and squash and digging the last of the potatoes and carrots. One of the harvested carrots had two legs. The other vegetables in the harvest basket laughed at the two-legged carrot, telling him that he was strange and ugly and had no value. The carrot had always thought he was beautiful. Now he wished he could be reburied in the dirt where no one could see him and bully him.
But the gardener knew better. He knew the two-legged carrot would taste as good as any long, straight carrot and provide every bit as many nutritional benefits. The gardener combined the two-legged carrot with some lumpy potatoes, a funky-shaped tomato, crooked green beans, and other aesthetically-challenged vegetable soup. The gardener shared it with neighbors. Everyone was well-fed. No one knew that the vegetables had once been judged and found lacking.
This message is excerpted from “Parable of the two-legged carrot” by Terry L. Bowes in the October 2016 Gather magazine.
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