“You shall love your crooked neighbour, with your crooked heart.”
― W.H. Auden.
As a child, how I loved to open the well-used ChildCraft encyclopedias, turning to the poem about the little crooked man in his little crooked house with his little crooked dog.... I'd study the drawing, trace my finger over the scene. Even back then, I understood it wasn't totally about the physical condition of the man. Calling someone "crooked" meant they weren't fair and honest in their dealings with others. A crook ended up in jail or in heaps of trouble. As a teenager, I heard our president deny he was a crook. So what's this about loving our crooked neighbors with our own crooked hearts?! Could it be that we all have a bit of a deviousness that interferes with our fairness in judging others? Alas, 'tis true. For some it is no more than our crooked little toes; for others, there are times we are as crooked as a pretzel and just as salty. Something to keep in mind! - Beth Almond Ford
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