I
know my capacity for empathy is limited by my own experiences (and lack
thereof). I, like Melody, have so many reasons for hoping people stay,
but I am also painfully aware of my capacity to pour salt on the wounds
of the deeply wounded by expressing that hope. It's a conundrum of the
highest level because when we love something, we want to share it with
those we love. The fact that sometimes our
own life-saving elixir could be poison to someone else is more than
most of us can comprehend or even bear. I wonder if thinking of it in
terms of something like food allergies might help. I love shrimp, peanut
butter, and strawberries, and they are good and wholesome for my body,
but would I offer them to someone deathly allergic, hoping they would
eat them with as much gusto as I do? People sometimes get over
allergies, but perhaps I'm showing my insensitivity and bias by thinking
that would be a good thing. So much for metaphors. The more I try to
understand anything, it seems, the more I realize that I see through a
glass darkly, and the more I long to see as God sees and love as God
loves.
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Monday, March 21, 2016
I'm experimenting with putting some Facebook posts of mine up on my blog. Here's one from 2014 where I comment on an Exponent article.
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Cool! It worked! I copied the whole post from my Activity log. It even linked the article. Expect more of these. I am a very slow writer, so some posts, especially where I want to be as diplomatic and inoffensive as I can be, take me hours to write. I have so many conservative friends and family members who I love dearly and do not want to alienate. I hope they don't totally unfriend me, but instead just scroll over stuff they are uncomfortable with, because I try to put a variety of stuff up so I do not become a one trick pony. I have no control over what other people do, so I just have to respond to the world according to my limited understanding and conscience.
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