There's No One Laughing--You Will Be Safe In Here

We hunger to be known and understood. We hunger to be loved. We hunger to be at peace inside our own skins. We hunger not just to be fed these things but, often without realizing it, we hunger to feed others these things because they too are starving for them. We hunger not just to be loved but to love, not just to be forgiven but to forgive, not just to be known and understood for all the good times and bad times that for better for worse have made us who we are, but to know and understand each other to the same point of seeing that, in the last analysis, we all have the same good times, the same bad times, and that for that very reason there is no such thing in all the world as anyone who is really a stranger.

- Frederick Buechner

from Secrets in the Dark: A Life in Sermons

Interesting…this seems to correspond with a newsletter article that my dad wrote last month (hi dad!! See, if you had a blog, I could link to it right now…but wait, you don’t. Let’s change that, shall we? Everyone say, Dan, get your blog and become like us!). Dad, did you really write your comment last month, or have I cut out the words of someone else?

What the Our Redeemer newsletter had on its front page last month was really the flip side of this Buechner quotation. Dad (or his ghost writer) talks about how we are afraid to allow ourselves to view others in new or different lights—we want to put individuals in one box and keep them there, holding fast to our perceptions of them.

And, to combine that with Buechner’s words, it makes me think that this is may be why we often encounter so much tension with one another. We want so badly to be understood. I know that I would love to stand on the mountaintops and scream, “Please, just listen to me for a minute, let me explain my thinking and my rationale!” But I’ve stopped short of this, not only because I’m at one of the lowest points in the nation right now and there aren’t even hills, much less mountains. I just can’t believe that anyone would understand my side of the story. In fact, I don’t think they even want to hear my side of the story. I’ve put people into a box, sealed it up with my assumptions and locked it tight with my doubts.

I’m afraid to let people out of that box—and to let myself out of the box that they’ve created for me. What if they don’t really want to forgive me? What if I can’t find peace again?

Uhhhhhhhhhh this isn’t even making sense in my head, much less any of yours. I’m going to go ahead and post, but then continue on this train after I find the other words of wisdom that I’ve been discussing.