Skinhead?

I didn’t recognize the lady who was power walking through my neighborhood this morning but then I don’t know everyone who lives in my community. It’s the way of things thanks to busy lives and iPhones and Internet.

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In a job I worked years ago there was an awesome edgy girl name Shannon who had her hair styled in a sort-of Dorothy Hammil look but with an undercut that wasn’t yet trending. Her look was ahead of her time and we worked in a fairly conservative environment. Shannon would tell us that her haircut brought out strong reactions in people. Strangers in the market would sneer behind her back. Once a guy in line behind her, clearly agitated with her statement hair, bumped her hard with his cart. It was not an accident. It was intentional and she cognitively and physically felt his angry disapproval.

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Shannon worked as a pastoral assistant and was not a skinhead or punk rocker as others misjudged.

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Back to the walking lady in my neighborhood. What made her worth a second look was her completely shaved head beneath her baseball cap. My heart instantly told me that this look was not evidence of a right wing militia group but that of a woman who was very likely dealing with the big C and on the survivor side of chemotherapy.

You just never know where someone is coming from by their look but how quickly we judge others based on our own life experiences, media exposure, etc.

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Life and death walk hand and hand with each other. Some of us gravitate toward the life and some towards the dark. There is beauty in both if you believe that death is not an end. The fragile and beautiful flowerhead of the dill plant pictured here is side by side with its dried seed head counterpart. The seeds of the one having now died can live again. Lowered down beneath its airy cousin into the darkness—laid to rest, if you will, until the wonder of being buried causes new life to once again spring forth. Just because we can’t see what’s happening in the dark doesn’t mean a powerful Life force is not at work bringing once-dead things to life. At times its a waiting game and at other times we need to power-walk the thing back to life. The lady did.