Untarnished

I remember as a kid having to polish my mother's silver whenever we were going to have special guests for dinner. It was a messy process as the black tarnish on the surface seemed to always end up on my hands rather than the polishing cloth. Sometimes I had to use a soft brush to get inside all the grooves in the handles or around the edge of a serving piece. Even though the utensils were stored in silver cloth, they always needed to be polished before they were used again. No matter how hard we tried to defeat it, the tarnish was always there.

As I look at this vintage set of silver from a railroad dining car hermetically sealed to avoid exposure to the air, I'm reminded at how little it took to tarnish our silver place settings. Similarly, no matter how hard we try to keep ourselves polished and shiny, it only takes a little exposure to "bad air" to tarnish us. No matter how pure we are inside, if we are tarnished on the surface, it jeopardizes the integrity of what is inside.