2003-09-26 - 5:23 p.m.
July 23, 2003
Four thank you letters done, five more to write for all the genuine Christian hospitality given me this summer. Some day… some day, I will repeat to myself the whole long journey and remember sinking into the most comfortable beds… some day I will have something to give back. It is unlikely that I will be giving back to you or you or you, or even to yours, not anymore than any of you have been able to return the charity of those in your past. I live with assurance someone will return the favor for me, just as some day I will return the gift of hospitality. It is like a web, you see, Person A gives to Person B, God motivates Person C to give to Person A for giving to Person B, meanwhile Person B gives to Person D, and God motivates Person E to fulfill the cycle.
Last night I watched Harrison’s Flowers, based upon a true story of a professional photojournalist reported dead while covering the genocide of Yugoslavia in 1991. His wife, convinced he is alive, leaves their two children with their grandmother as she goes to rescue him. I rented the movie because I want to be that kind of wife, to know that kind of love and courage, and I saw what I paid for. But I was not prepared for the propaganda and scenes of war that came with the story. I could not even cry by the end of the movie so terrified I was by the scenes of utter destruction and of war. How, looking at a scene like that, does one believe in God? The question scared me.
If you can stand that sort of thing, the movie is a good one. I have never had the guts for that kind of horror. In high school I lay on my floor for nearly an hour one New Years Eve crying uncontrollably I was so scared for the destruction we could cause for ourselves. Apparently it still gets me.
