My grandma made a special vegetarian dinner for me last night. We sat around, eating and talking, for over two hours!
Earlier in the day I had told Zach that I wanted to print off my blog and let her read it. Not because I wanted to shock her or disappoint her but because I want to understand and also be understood by her. When we talk, I always know what she thinks and believes but to explain what I think or why, I would have to play catch up for two hours--explaining many things that have brought me to where I am now. Her reading my blog would just be easier; then we could start in the same place—now.
While we were talking though, she mentioned how she had fallen off her bike in Italy and she believed an angel had gently lifted her to the ground. Also, for over ten years my grandma had a dog named Sugar and she died last year. The dog had became an extremely close companion for her. Last night she told me that Sugar has appeared to her three times since she passed. She also said, in her own little way she used to tell Sugar about God and Jesus. She would leave the Christian radio on every time she left the house and tell her to listen to the songs about Jesus.
Sitting across the table from that white-haired grandmother of mine, I saw very plainly her sincerity. She wasn’t making those things up. She wasn’t trying to deceive anyone. She was floating along, on the island of her own paradigm, speaking her truth (which is based on the combination of her life experiences so far). Does everyone have their own versions of the truth?
My grandma sincerely believed what she was telling me just as sincerely as I didn’t believe it. I realized it felt like we were speaking different languages. I understood her because she was speaking the language I grew up speaking—believing in God the father, miracles, Jesus as my savior, etc. But I wonder if she could possibly ever understand me…
Maybe I don’t really need to be understood. Is it really necessary to push my grandma into the tumult of worry and fear for my soul? It’s probably just easier to let her think I’m a good little Christian girl. The only problem is that’s what I’ve let people assume for years and it has felt suffocating! Last night though, it didn’t feel suffocating. It felt like I was able to interact with my grandma in a peaceful way and observe her beliefs without threatening them. I knew within myself that I felt differently and it was okay that she didn’t know.
I don’t care at all that my grandma and I differ so completely in our beliefs. I don’t feel the need to contemplate if one of us is right and the other wrong. It seems to me we’re all working on our own part of a giant puzzle--one the size of a football field. Who am I to tell anyone the pieces they have put together don’t fit?
Agreed. People's beliefs and interpretations of reality just another aspect of our need to accept diversity, be it skin color, cultural mores or spiritual proclivities. The key is not letting that difference threaten our picture of the world that we've put together as how we view truth! This is a weak point because anything a person likes, loves, believes or is excited about--he wants to share and try to get others on board because it has made the pieces fit for him and therefore he feels secure! Getting another to be in agreement also reinforces that what he has chosen is in fact true, because--look--others are agreeing with him so it must be true! It's very easy to see how quickly the human ego has rejected, isolated or attacked others because their rejection of these things become a rejection of HIM. If one believes that all anyone really wants is to be love and receive love (however unskillful), then one can take this and translate their words/actions into the language of love, knowing that we all share this in common. At that level there is no threat and what one hears is another's sharing of love in his life.
ReplyDeleteI do love the fact that you have come to such a magnificent place as to be able to claim that last paragraph! What freedom you've summoned.
Well said, Allie, well said.
ReplyDelete"Who am I..."
It is sometimes very hard to respect the right of another person to perceive the world as they perceive it, and allow them to grow from those perceptions, (or not).
ReplyDeleteWe are all involved in helping form those perceptions in each other by our interactions together. It is always to complex to ferret out all the beginnings and endings of all our beliefs, but it is always good to examine our own and others beliefs because, hopefully, that will keep us conscious and awake to this moment and this action, and this interaction.
We truly are what we believe.