Have you ever bitten into a green tomato? Have you ever sunk your teeth into a fall apple during the heat of summer or into a summer strawberry during the cool of spring? Have you ever listened to a choir’s first rehearsal, read a book’s first draft, gazed at an artist’s initial sketches? Have you ever tasted a chef’s half-baked dish, watched a choreographer’s first dance, listened to a song’s initial lyrics?

If you’ve eaten that apple or read that draft or listened to that song you know the unpleasantness of enduring what is merely underway, of what remains a work in progress. If your tongue has been curdled by that sour strawberry, if your ears have been pierced by those unformed harmonies, if your eyes have been offended by the missed cues and faltering steps, you know the struggle to appreciate work that is partial, that is unfinished, that remains in its formative stages.

We have no right to pass judgment on work that has not yet been completed. We should not condemn in August an apple that is meant to ripen on the tree until October. It will become sweet in its time, if only


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