Thursday, March 17, 2016
The readings today make me think about impact and legacy. I think a question we all often grapple with is: Are we leaving this world a better place than before we entered it? Do we leave knowing people are more complete and whole or do we spend our time breaking others down. It is so easy to give in to anger and temptation. To be competitive or to be so focused you blaze over others in your path regardless of the consequences. Do we become a Gandhi, Romero or do we become a Hitler? I am reading a book aloud to my students right now called "Slated." The premise of the story is that the government is giving young trouble makers and terrorists a second chance by erasing their memory if they are younger than 16. If this happens to you, you become slated. They place a tracking device on you that monitors your emotional levels and if your feelings become to extreme in the negatives the device knocks you out. The students are fascinated with the story and have fallen in love with our heroine. The major question she keeps asking is: How can I know who I am if I don't know where I came from or who I was? We use this question to discuss the impact we are making and the imprint that we leave on our world and community. I tell them that the choices they make today are shaping the person they will become. We can use our history drive us but it doesn't have to define us. It is never to late to right the wrongs of our past, it is never to late to start anew, but we have to keep our history with us, let it be a part of us so we can mold who we wish to become.
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The Old Testament reading was timely for us as our Trialogue Question w/Dennis was How do I feel about my Ancestors (Irish or not)? Dennis is Irish and loves researching his ancestry, spending a portion of his vacation each year pouring over library documents and old newspapers and court documents.
ReplyDeleteYour book sounds really interesting and I liked your comments at the end about our past. We certainly cannot deny things that happened in the past. They are part of who we are. But we do not have to let those events of the past dictate our future. Blaming our past is like blaming our personality style. It should never dictate our behaviors. I'm probably off focus, but it is late ; ) MOM
Oops! I forgot to share a quote from This Day reflection which gives me a lot of hope: "Faith is enacted by those who trust God who imagines well beyond our resistant presuppositions. Such imagination requires a dying and yields utterly new life." Walter Brueggemann. With Faith in a loving God, we can all move beyond, use to our advantage and choose to grow from the negative things in our past. With faith in God (which gives us faith in ourselves) the horizons can be limitless. MOM
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