Saturday, July 27, 2013

An awkward confession

So I have a bit of a confession to make: I'm a little proud. Actually, quite possibly a lot. In fact, I generally think I'm right. As in, I always suspect I'm right. After all, why believe something at all, if you aren't going to believe you are right in believing it? Or so I've always philosophized my way away from humility.

But I'm beginning to learn something: there is nothing like even just the preparations for marriage to begin to make me gulp and question the above philosophy... I mean, here's quite a shocker: my fiancé does not think the exact same way as me on everything. I know, you all will need to pick your jaws up off the floor and let out a sigh in deep sympathy now, but it's true. And even more, sometimes he looks at me and actually suspects he might be able to see an area in my life in which I need to improve. I generally assure him quickly that he need not worry about such things.

Alas, my half-joking words are so much more true than not, and my heart constricts in pain as I realize just how much suffering I have the capability of causing by my mere know-it-all attitude (one long cultivated by the age of two). So here's something I am also now learning: I might be right. It's true. I might be, but generally it doesn't matter one bit. My rightness is totally unimportant to the orbit of the world around the sun, but my valuing of my future husband's views can change history. Maybe I'm still over-inflating any single decision of my own, including a good decision, but I'm beginning to think that that's possibly the kind of power we all hold when we affirm one another and lay down our rightness. We set a precedence that may last forever.

So, y'all, I am proud. And I enjoy displaying my rightness. Pray for me to be better than I am today. I don't want to be that person (and all my family who has suffered under my know-it-all-ness for two decades probably wants to kiss my fiancé's feet right now).

Sunday, July 14, 2013

Some heavy news

My heart is heavy today. I've been reading a lot of news lately:

"Zimmerman is aqcuitted of murder and manslaughter charges." - NY Times

  • I don't think I need to explain this one... you all have been probably watching the story of George Zimmerman far more closely than I have on this side of the world.
  • An interesting point of comparison from 2007 in the NY Times: Man Convicted of Shooting Teenager 


"Monk threatens politicians over interfaith marriage" - Irrawaddy News

  • This is about setting up a law to make it difficult or impossible for a Buddhist girl to marry a Muslim man... or any other religion, though it's for the purpose of alienating the Muslim population. 
  • It is referred to as the "national race protection" law.

"Police attacked with petrol bombs in Belfast" - BBC News
  • That again? I thought this ended, when I was just a small child. Nationalists and Royalists.

And there's more, not to mention the number of fearful Facebook posts, from people who thought one way or the other about Zimmerman's verdict. People swearing that the only response is for every "responsible" human being to carry a gun. God, help us.

All I see is all of this is that the world is full of people who are afraid of the other. And it's a deadly fear. I pray we all learn to face our fears and see the human, the image of God even, in the eyes of those we fear.