A history lesson....?
What are you teaching me, God? Hmmmmm, I know. ....I learn alone, I share with no one..So, I journal and ask HIM to help me to process and apply the wisdom HE imparts, so it may become a part of me. (A better way of learning is to teach someone else, or at least reflect with a friend - I am working on that, or at least thinkin' about it.)
A friend, Brad, (not his real name), came to talk to me at the coffee shop about his recent jail time and his realization that he has "no one to call" - no family nor deep relationships of this level; he's a bit of a hermit, reading his books, writing in his journal. Seeing a few handfulls of aquantences and "friends" regularly doesn't really constitute "family." He's realizing that he is alone and yes, sometimes, lonely.
I tell him that we are created,..GOD made all of us for human bonds and fellowship. We need this we were not meant to be islands. In my head, simutaneously, I hear a song from my childhood - repeating, confirming Brad's tale is not for him alone:
I am a rock
I am an Island
and a rock never gets hurt
and an Island never cries...
I tell my homeless friend, (yes, Brad lives on the street and in the woods and on a couple random couches of buddies sometimes, and he rides a bicycle - which has recently been impounded,) ...I tell him that though I understand some hard knocks have come his way, he (Brad) is the one who has pulled away. This isolation he has chosen is some kind of self defense strategy to keep him form hurt. He takes this in but I think he already knows. I already know this about myself, but ...does it change my daily descisions? Am I acting on this realization (which, by the way, has been GOD's personal message to me for a year and a half)??
Yes, in answer... somewhat.
In "homeschool" we've been studying Japan's 250 year isolation from the rest of the world. The emporer and the shogun decided and decreed that it would be best for the people to allow no outside (western) influence to pollute their sacred society. But then in 1820, when U.S. president came asking for trade priveledges and friendship with this beautiful Island, civil war threatened as two contradicting factions within the country struggled for control. Die hard isolationists, joined by the Emporer, sought to preserve Japanese culture and autonomy while the shogun and his followers desired to open up to the wise and scientifically advanced west.
I feel like there exists within my island, both a protective emporer (the old man who remembers the past and focuses too much upon it), and a progressive shogun (in the analogy, the Holy Spirit, who prompts me to trust people, initiate friendship with the flaky human race who, by the way, is bound to hurt me over and over again.) But this is the way of growth....no?
Anyway, this is what I enjoy about history. It's filled with good guys and bad guys (though they are difficult to distinguish from one another at times and two different sides of a story almost always reaveal identification and empathy with BOTH sides.) Hind sight is 20/20. And, one can usually find, in the clashes of cultures, her own selfish person, acting in the way she feels she needs to, for her own survival and preservaton, or those of the subjects of her little kingdom (her children.)
