2019 Mar 26 Men, Fear Or Vistas of Hope
Margaret Atwood’s quote, ” Men are afraid women will laugh at them. Women are afraid men will kill them.” is too simplified to honestly live on it’s own, unless it is just meant to honour women, and disparage men.
That’s the real deep problem of illuminating only part of reality, but that is what we are at most capable of.
Used as misadrism it’s not really helpful, it kills the human spirit.
More honest is to say:
Women are afraid men will kill them, men they know, but especially men they do not know. Their fear is real, and tragically accurate of a few men.
Men are afraid women will drive them to kill themselves, especially women they know, but generally all women. Their fear is real, and tragically accurate of more than a few women.
This fear is of real, literal death; but also of smaller deaths, even figurative deaths, deaths that rob a man (or a woman) of life at the core.
The real killer is the fear. Living in fear limits the horizon to only well guarded, defensive stances.
Or as Atwood also wrote: “I hope that people will finally come to realize that there is only one ‘race’ – the human race – and that we are all members of it.”
Life for each and every one of us is intended to be lived looking to God’s horizon that is so far out-reaches any of ours that we can only be astounded as we glimpse the vistas available to us, each and all.
Health is measured in how we help each other see those vistas and the creator of them.
Rain was forecast this morning. Instead we received snow, fluffy big heavy flakes that made noise landing on the tarps shelter.
Spring is the time of re-newed life. But first, as the snows of the winter melt, we must face the dreck of the life through the winter, records of the mess we’ve lived and made.
So instead of rain that makes mud, to get snow that gives a fresh cover again over the remains of past efforts to live, including many painful failures,
This vista reaches deep inside as the horizon is clouded away and the light is dimmed.
Fresh
Clean
Promising
Hope
Sounds like a winter baptism of the world and for the creatures.
Fear, of how the past will catch us, is no way to live. There are renewals that do not hide or cover up that past.
They are called forgiveness, reconciliation, and hope …
hope that allows one to laugh with instead of at another person.