Ten Thousand Places

Sixteen years later, I finally looked it up and I wasn’t imagining it, I could see across the water from Dahab, Egypt to S.A. I found this pretty picture on wikipedia.

The Gulf of Aqaba is about 15 miles wide at this point. At the time I had no idea how wide the the Gulf of Aqaba was or if it was possible to see across it. I thought maybe I was seeing an island. Here it is on a map.

I’ve always wondered about that. I’ve also seen Jordan across the Dead Sea, which was really cool, and Lebanon through a gate which had Isaiah 2:4 written on it: “They will beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks. Nation will not take up sword against nation, nor will they train for war anymore.”

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I’ve been thinking, as I often do, about how we develop our identity — how we think of ourselves and how we try to appear to the world.  I’ve always found that decisions against something tend to be as strong an incentive for me as decisions towards something.  A friend in college, for example, who talked about herself all the time and never asked about me is a big reason why I try to be a good listener to this day.  Legalism in any context but especially in my own religion has defined by contrast my concept of God and grace and compassion in general.  I think that’s okay, I think that’s how we learn about the world and how we continue to develop our thoughts and opinions.  But ultimately I don’t want my answer to, “Who are you,” to be, “I’m against insensitivity,” or “legalism” or even “injustice,” as important as resistance to evil is.  I want to be positive, not in the sense of cheerful and perky necessarily, or even optimistic, but in a more basic, even mathmatical sense.  +Jessica.  I want not just to fight evil (in whatever form); to reduce the bad.  I want to add good, to be good, to be truth and beauty that stands on its own, not that’s defined as what it’s not.

Think about your response to questions about politics, religion, society, humanity.  If you can only answer what you dislike about Republicans (or Democrats), religious  fundamentalism (or atheism), separatism (or integration), free will (or predestination)*, then do you really have an opinion, an identity?  What if all the “bad” suddenly disappeared?  Would you know who you are?

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*I’m not listing these pairs as opposites, only as disparate.

Look how excited I was!

This has nothing to do with the above picture, but I wanted to say a prayer for my friends who are feeling the darkness of the season — Seasonal Affective Disorder, they call it, but I call it, “Why are we still living in New England when there are so many warmer, viable options?”  But, here we are, and the gorgeous autumn that we just experienced as a perk of the region is being followed, as it always is, by months of dark and cold.

Hang in there.

Spring will be here in a few short months, and in the meantime, God loves you as much as he did on the most brilliant summer day, even if your tan has faded and you have gained ten pounds and don’t get out of your pajamas for days at a time.