COMMENT: What is my world?
By Keith Simmonds
I am not sure how it is for you, but for me, truth is not so much in seeing, but in questioning.
If I should see someone on the corner, or in the doorway, looking for help with something, and my question is: “I wonder what he did, or did not do, to end up like that?” then I have created a truth about my world and how I see it. I have created a truth about my world and how it sees me.
If, on the other hand (OTOH, as the texters say) I see someone on the corner, or in the doorway, looking for help with something, and my question is: “I wonder why our community is so constructed by us that we feel it is okay to consign other humans to begging for help?” then I have also created a truth about my world and how I see it. I have created a truth about my world and how it sees me.
What is my world? What am I within it? Is it a place where I am responsible for my own destiny, left to live and die on my own best efforts? Is it a place where I, when hungry am expected to account for my hunger? To list the efforts I have taken to find food, or shelter, or, clothing, or care? Is it a place where my worthiness depends upon my ability, where my survival depends upon how I might inspire love in your heart, awaken something akin to empathy in your soul?
What is my world? What am I within it? Is it a place where I make you responsible, or I respond? Is it a place where I leave you to live or die, taking comfort in knowing it’s all up to you, or is it a place where I see your need and I know I am one of the community that surrounds and responds to need? Is it a place where I demand to know what you have done to help yourself, or is it a place where I am curious about the gifts you have to offer and offer to help you bring them to the waiting world that nurtures all of us?
Is my world a place where I will only offer to feed certain acts after deeming them worthy, or is it a place where all acts of love and care and attentiveness, all expressions of art and song and nurture are gifts to the world that receives them, expressions of care and sharing as valid as food and shelter and clothing? Do I dwell in a place that offers nurture and care to the beautiful, the haunting, the helpless and the compelling, whilst ignoring the repulsive, the harmed, the maimed, the selves destroyed by unwilling compliances with willful acts of harm?
What is my world? How do I see it? In the world of my creator, should I be seeing the 99 or the 1? Should I be seeking to bring the cast out back into community, or looking to close the door against yet more? Is my world a common wealth, a gift for all who share it, or are some – by virtue of inexplicable acts of self willed harm and destruction – marked out as unworthy, unable, undone?
In my world am I the 99 or the 1? Am I the 100 visible expressions of our indivisible One? What is my world?
Keith Simmonds is a diaconal minister in the Communities in Faith Pastoral Charge serving Beaver Valley, Rossland, Salmo and Trail.
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