On the weekend I spoke about community. In 30 minutes of words I couldn’t have framed my thoughts any more eloquently than this.
…And it could be that for beauty as it turned out to be for French, that there is no key, that ‘oui’ will never make sense in our language but only in its own, and that we need to start all over again, on a new continent, learning the strange syllables one by one.
-Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, Annie Dillard.
Here are the strange syllables of that I am learning, one by one. “Family.” “Community.” “Responsibility.” I know what these words meant in the old country; when I lived under the dominion of sin…but now I have a new home, a new country, a new King. These syllables, these ideas; they are weapons in the old country. The very things they are supposed to protect and uphold are the very things they undermine and bring to ruin. But that is the way of the dominion of sin, to burn and to savage and to destroy.
Family. Community. Responsibility. These words make no sense, have no meaning as I have understood them in the past. Perhaps I have been hearing them out of context. Maybe the only place where they can be truly heard is in their country of origin. The challenge has been made that I cannot understand these words until I participate in them, as they were meant to be known. Here, on a new continent, under a new King.
