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Karima is a Moroccan artist.

The wall where she sits in the marketplace in the stunningly beautiful seaside town of Asilah is lined with her paintings of seascapes, hillside towns, people, children, and numerous other scenes, and all sizes, from five by sevens that can be framed to postcards.

I suppose there are better artists than Karima, but few who paint with their feet. You see, Karima was born with withered hands. Unable to use them at all, she learned to paint with her left foot and is now able to support herself by selling her art.

Daily she can be found at the same spot taking requests from passersby for a specific painting, and selling ones she has already completed. Once something is finished she swishes it in the air with her foot to help dry the paint, then uses both feet to carefully slide the picture into the sleeve of a plastic cover.

One of our daughters loves pigs, and we were searching for a decorative piece in the shape of a pig for her upcoming birthday. We had had no luck, no doubt due in part to the fact that Muslims do not eat pork. Pigs were nowhere to be found in any form or shape.

That’s when we thought of Karima whom we had met a few days before. Perhaps she could do a painting of a pig? She had never done one before, she said, but would be willing to try. It turned out to be the perfect birthday gift, a painting of a pig signed by Karima and also a picture of her painting it.

Karima’s story brings to mind the life of the Irish painter, poet, and writer, Christy Brown, who was born with cerebral palsy, but went on to become world renown because of his autobiography, My Left Foot, that was made into a movie for which Daniel Day Lewis won an academy award for Best Actor.

It is easy to pass over stories like Karima’s and miss the significance of them. Placed next to Brown’s story, and hundreds, even thousands of others, she reminds us that people are people, whatever their nationality, whatever their religion, whatever their station in life.

It is a simple, yet profound lesson in life.

Human beings are human beings. All of us. There is good in us and there is bad in us. There is appalling selfishness in us, and stunning generosity in us. All of us.

Everyone deserves a chance in life. Everyone. No one should be ignored because they are not like others. No one.

Everyone deserves to be treated with respect. Everyone. No one deserves to be labeled or categorized as this or that because of something someone else has done who is the same race, color, religion, or nationality as they are. No one.

Sitting in front of that wall in the marketplace in Asilah, Karima’s beautiful smile hid the struggles in her life as one living at the margins of the good life most of us enjoy.

But at the deepest level of being, she is all of us, determined to do the best she can with the life she has been given.

She is also Jesus’ own sister. He said as much when he called her “one of the least of these.”

That makes her my sister, too. Ah, now I see what I didn’t see when I first met her. Karima is a member of our family I had not known until we went to Morocco.

I won’t miss that fact again. So the next time I see her, whether it is actually her and one like her, it will be automatic that I will know I am in the presence of one of my sisters or brothers.

That’s when I will know that I have made the great transition from “they” and “me” to “we” and “us.”