I felt I would be amiss if I failed to write to you from where I sit at the moment. There is only one light on in the room in which I sit, and I am writing to you from Neusiedl am See, Austria. In just one week, I do believe I have experienced more new culture and worldview than I have in nearly half of my life. I traveled to the Musician's Mecca of Mozart's birthplace, I experienced the wonderful German food and drink that is so well known in the this part of the world, and I have met so many different people from many different walks of life.
I assure you that my summer, even though it has been sorely lacking in Scarlequain and deeper blogging, has not been without deep thinking and musing, of which this blog is so accustomed to. I have recently finished reading The Great Gatsby for the second time (any of you who know me understand that Fitzgerald's writing always stirs something deep inside me...it seems to me that he briefly glimpses larger portions of the Canvas of Life on which we are all specks of color than the rest of the world does, and as I try to wrap my mind around such large ideas of humanness, I am oftentimes lost in wonder), and I am halfway through with a book entitled Visions of Vocation: Common Grace for the Common Good by Steven Garber, a gentleman whom I had the pleasure of hearing lecture at the American Enterprise Institute this summer.
Before I go off on the rant I have been mulling over, let me present you with a Scarlequain that inspired this brief musing in my mind.
Sea of faces,
Cliffs of spaces,
A kingdom of air,
God's personal stair:
Above the Clouds.
I wrote this poem around 32,000 feet in the air on my way to Washington DC. It was the first time I had ever flown anywhere before at all, and the first major trip I took all on my own. Seeing my world from this grand new perspective pushed me to write for the first time all summer, I believe, and it has stayed in the back of my mind ever since. This summer has been one of the new: my family and I drove to Colorado together, I worked on Coach busses (learned something new every day there), I fly alone to Washington DC for a conference with some of the country's most brilliant minds, and finally I am interning with the Austrian Red Cross. I've never been to Europe at all, I don't speak German, I've never had any experience with European trains or travel, and yet here I am.
This summer has taught me that it is possible to truly know who someone is, and have them truly know who you are, and still love and be loved by them. I believe now that it is really possible for me to hold no dirty secret about myself back and yet still be loved. To be Known, and even still, to be Loved. This is a strong theme Mr. Garber explores in his book in reference to the world. Each of us are entering into some form of vocation: teaching, raising children, policy making, driving ambulances, fixing Coaches, working at Chickfila...all of us are Called by the Lord to work in His service, and every job is worthy in His sight. Oftentimes in our job, we will find out terrible things about the world in which we live. People starve every day in Hungary because the culture is poorer there. Older people die of stroke in Austria because there aren't enough hospitals to treat them. Malaysian planes are shot down; innocent (and guilty) people are brutally killed in Israel and Gaza. The world in which we live isn't a lovely place at times, and as it's inhabitants, we Know it. We are faced with a choice, then. Since we Know it, including all the awful people and thing terrible things that happen, will we Love it? Mr. Garber says, "There is not a more difficult task that human beings face."
A new Austrian friend of mine, Mario, said today "History is made right here, right now." Mr. Garber tends to agree with him. It is not the heroes that Know and Love our world, necessarily. It is the ordinary people who choose on a daily basis to say "It will not be like that here."
I suppose my point is this: each of us are placed in the life we are in for a specific reason. I am in Austria learning how to care for people in an ambulance (even though I have no interest in the medical field) for a specific reason. I am daily Knowing things about the world. You live your life everyday. You go to work. You care for your children or your siblings or your parents. You go to school. The small choice you make every day exponentially multiply upon themselves to determine whether or not the Known world is Loved and changed (My world will not continue to be the ways I see that horrify me), or if it stays the same. Perhaps we should be reminded of that more often. Do not conform to our culture of Whatever. The responsibility for our world rests in your hands. Do you wish to see another Tienamen Square? Another 9/11? Another Rwandan genocide? Another Holocaust? Love today, in the smallest things.
We are constantly learning - Knowing. Ask yourself this question of insurmountable weight:
Knowing what I know, what will I do?
Truly answering this question cannot leave you unchanged.
As I was flipping through my little leather book looking for the poem I included in this post, I stumbled across a quote by James Joyce I found appropriate. Perhaps you can join me in applying this to the question of knowing and loving. The world waits to be Known. The world waits to be Loved - and thereby, changed.
"Welcome, O life! I go to encounter for the millionth time the reality of experience and to forge in the smithy of my soul the uncreated conscience of my race."
