A live oak stands outside my university office. It’s more than 75 years old, with a trunk broad enough to require my outstretched arms times four to encircle it. Lower branches thicker than most tree trunks swoop close to the ground.
The oak rises from mulched dirt at the intersection of two sidewalks. Mulch then stretches for 25 feet to a building.
Generations of people have walked past the tree. Many shortened their journey by crossing the mulch, and their hundreds of thousands of feet etched a diagonal shortcut in dirt.
Last week, the university surrendered. It installed a 45-foot paved walkway atop the path.
Humans will find a way – with ingenuity and initiative, prompted by self-interest or fear seeded with an acceptance of risk.
It’s why migrants flee countries broken by craven governments, failed economies and violence.
Other governments then try to remove them and inflict cruel, intentional, dehumanizing harm – and waste their billions of dollars in trying.
Because ingenious, motivated and scared humans will find a way, anyway. They’ll make a path.
Harm isn’t the answer. Humanity first.
Amen, Reverend.