| | A memory:
Personally speaking, it's very hard for me to share nature with others. For instance, I can't begin to articulate how deeply touched I was by meeting Bryce Canyon face to face. My cousin who went on the trip with me kept exclaiming how cool the sights were, and when she inquired after my silence after noticing that I hadn't said anything for a while, I made my attempt to explain to her in my broken Korean that "when I see something 'cool' like this, I can't talk. I just feel it inside." Not too far away were other members of our group - I kid you not, seventeen elderly men and women from the Korean countryside, with the heaviest country accent and most blatant country proclivities I'd ever witnessed...personally speaking. I didn't know how to feel when other tourists, who obviously lived in the States, stared in horror as these men would spit, smoke, and yell at their wives to "hurry and get in the picture." But despite these bitingly uncomfortable moments, Bryce was grand enough to steal a few of their breaths away, sprinkling a few moments of silence in an otherwise chaotic tourist scene.
A thought:
Have you noticed how when people come in contact with the ocean, mountains, sky, or small children...they stop acting like their normal selves? The tilted head of a child, looking up at you makes even the most austere adult melt, at least for a moment. Throw a street kid in the expanse of land and sky, and you see his social labels, self-chosen or not, washed away. That day at Bryce Canyon, I saw loud, bickering Korean grandmothers in loud, glossy pink sweats [with matching visors and handkerchiefs around their necks]...given back a moment of innocence in the crystal breeze that makes you hold yourself tighter...in the dancing colors of the canyons that make you want to cry for that unnamable thing, simultaneously lost and found in that moment. Perhaps in this way, creation possesses life's meaning.
A confession:
My experiences with things I love, I feel, are too fragile to share. In that way, shamefully, sharing is my weakness. I tend to hoard any love I end up receiving. Whatever kinds of love is allotted to me, I do not take them lightly and archive them in my heart, moment by moment, one after another.
A gnawing struggle:
If He talks about how we shouldn't worry about food or clothes - these things that we need for survival or well-being, how does this message sound to a family living in a Kenyan drought...or orphans in an IDP camp in Darfur...? If birds, which are allegedly worth less than we are, are taken care of, taken care of! ...and are provided with food...or, if lilies of the fields are dressed more abundantly than Solomon could have ever clothed himself with in all his wealth, then what about these people? Where is their food? Their clothes? Where is their "being taken care of"?
Even yesterday, my new internship put real Sudanese faces to the media's patchy, runny ink [not enough ink, perhaps?]. An impromptu trip to the theater, and I find The Soloist's music coming in second to the images that made me remember my own firsthand experiences at Skid Row. I return home to a CNN special on the thirty-six children gunned down in Chicago just within this school year alone. The night progresses and I uncover one heartbreaking news after another. Pack these weights on and the stack becomes too heavy for one mind to carry and simultaneously succumb to sleep.
A crux:
I am reminded of a story about an orphan who was rescued from an abusive family. When he was lovingly welcomed into a sound, nurturing home, the child began hoarding food, hiding it around his strange, new room. The new parents' heart broke when they saw how their adopted child, whom they truly loved, was too broken to yet let in their love.
I remember when I first heard that story, it haunted me, and even still, I find myself unnerved and undone by it. He asks me to trust Him, to love Him by feeding His sheep, to take risks and let others in. Yet in so many ways, I find myself acting like that child - suspicious of Love, in case it might just be "love," hesitant to embrace being embraced, all while hoarding morsels of affirmation or moments of safety and beauty from wherever I possibly can.
So my question as of late:
By what means can I help make anything whole in this world if I myself am so far from wholeness?
One shade from the multifaceted answer to that question:
A woman in Baghdad watched as policemen lit her car on fire, occupied by her husband and son. When she testified in court, this is her response: "These people took away everything that I love most...so I have a lot of love to give." That woman had those policemen sent to her house so that she could care for them and love on them from there on out.
|
| | Posted 5/7/2009 11:56 PM - 4 Views
- share
- email
 - sent0
|
