We lived for 6 years in an old, old farmhouse that had been ill-fated to a life of half-hearted devotion on the part of it's owners. For all the years it stood before us and sadly including the years we inhabited it...it was never "finished." We joked that it was under constant renovation.
Living in a home under renovation, is not fun.
After 10 months of living abroad, I find that sometimes living within my mind that is
forcibly under renovation is even less pleasant. Of course I knew that in coming here, that stretching our lives and experiences far outside what we'd known before would cause us to change our thinking. But it is now that I understand more
definitively that how I lived "There," in truth utilized very little thinking.
There I moved within a atmosphere of opinion, idealism and information gluttony. Whether through listening to radio, oral communications at home and around town, picking up an occasional newspaper, an infrequent newscast or the magazine covers at the grocery-store check out...even WITHOUT a subscription to any cable television...my mind was engorged with Western-premised ideas.
Here, without command of the language, the attainable information has slowed to a trickle and after 10 months my synapses have slowly begun to fire with free thought. There is so little communication for me to absorb...that finally the stores in my mind have emptied out...and my mind has begun to consider the world around me, with curiosity.
It's hot here tonight. Someone remembered finally to turn on the heat lamp...Here, in our city called "The Furnace" of this nation... this night the children were restless asking for air conditioning...the evening cool is ever so tardy. So I sit up trying to be still, swatting at thirsty mosquitoes and it begins again...my mind begins to process what I've seen Here, what I "knew" There and I see that my foundation is being excavated.
I'm reading several books right now. One that is an extremely powerful wake-up call to the Brothers and Sisters in the West from a man who lived in the East and suffered enormous persecution. Another that was written some years ago by an intellectual from the East, giving his dissertation on the mindset of the East versus the West. The two books on some matters are diametrically opposed. Both leave this reader with the persistent awareness that my fuzzy, sugar-coated worldview requires demolition and a surer foundation laid.
Yet growing up There...even though I would have NEVER admitted it, and in fact cleverly prided myself on being temperate in my culturally-biased thinking...I was entrenched in my simplistic constructs of life, faith and mankind.
We are pressed in on all sides Here by humanity. Often I am so close to another human being on the bus riding to town that I feel I should confess something untoward to my husband upon my return! Constantly my mind is processing the masses that I see each day through the filter of my Western, middle-class background. Yet, the longer I live Here...the more aware I am of the limitations I've had on my thinking and how I believe He wants me to have a greater scope, more generous eyes...like His. (Please don't get me wrong, this renovation of my mind leaves me constantly aware that the little boxes I had things filed in previously, especially God, are utterly useless and inadequate...so when I say that my eyes might be like His...I mean that I might begin to experience a migration toward renewed sight...like His.)
Just this evening my eyes fell upon two farmers, in their manicured field, squatting down to diligently work their crops. They'd fashioned some sort of
over sized parasol that jutted out of the ground to shield them from the merciless sun. Who are they? What is their story? Have they experienced love?
Then as we went down a city street a young man, his auto-repair shop a little stall in a row of similar businesses, sitting on his heels...filthy and literally covered in grease...working on an engine block out in the road. What does he dream about? What does he need? Has anyone taken the time to know him and share their heart with him?
We had a big discussion tonight with our dear, local friend who is growing and searching for more meaningful answers...we talked about Eastern mindset, the Western one and what his impressions were of the differences in our young nation's history and his country's ancient one...
We talked about the Family Here and the brothers and sisters There...he asked about the passion of those who follow in the West...is it as great as he imagines?
What could I answer?
When I answered that universal fire and passion were not
necessarily the hallmarks I would think of...he said..."Ah, things that are easy to get, are easy to lose."
Perhaps that brings me back to the initial premise of this post...that every brick of "truth" that I hastily grabbed to form my early foundation is now being challenged and examined. If I say that love is in my foundation...then does that brick hold up under the pressure of the uncomfortable, culture-stress of my day to day existence? If not, I must renovate! I must replace that easily acquired brick with one that is divinely constructed to withstand any shaking that life in a new culture brings with it.
Every brick that I prided myself upon in my sure foundation must be inspected...lest my mindset and work on this Earth be built upon human conventions and reasoning.
Only then can I hope to have generous eyes that see those I pass by tomorrow in the Light of His love...not the vain curiosity of a common observer.
The cool has arrived...my pillow is calling...sorry for my long-winded post...
