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My Grandfather was a Baptist minister.
Now, in order to be a good minister you need to be able to tell a good story.
Even better if you can tell the same story in several different ways.
It recently occurred to me that one story he told me was a variation on a theme.
Perhaps you will recognize it:
When my Grandfather and his Sister, my Great Aunt Sophie were still quite young they went for a motorbike ride in the Yugoslavian mountains. When they reached the top, they stopped.
Getting off their bikes they paused for a few moments.
My grandfather told me it was a beautiful view.
The vista was intense with all the mountains that surrounded them.
Yet it was not the natural beauty that brought them to this place.
Over the edge and way down below from where they stood, a sea of monolithic boulders told another story.
Several years earlier this had been the sight of an earthquake
Grandfather then went on to explain that as lovely and as serene as this setting appeared, beneath the boulders below one thousand victims still lay buried.
“So it is with the people in our lives,” he said to me, sadly shaking his head as he finished his story:
“No matter how pristine, craggy or beautiful people may appear to be, we never know the tragedies buried below their surface.”
In essence…
Judge not.
This is one Opa Scherer story I haven’t heard. His sermons always had depth and no story he told remained on the surface (I don’t know whether you knew but I lived in the parsonage at Euclid Avenue with the Scherers for almost a year, while Helmuth had started his studies in Georgetown Kentucky). I’m not sure how the beauty of the Yugoslavian mountains and the buried terror of corpses underneath the boulders can be used as an analogy to people . . . well perhaps I do get it: whatever people are on the outside, beautiful, hard and broken, glitzy or ugly, we need to dig deeper to see their real reality, ultimately like us. Therefore, withhold judgment! something like that.
“Something like that”. That’s what we say when we are not sure we get it. And I don’t get it.
Love, Emmett
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Analogies are like that… Sometimes the sun (and/or perspective) has to be just right to get the whole picture. And for those that can’t see the hidden picture that lies beneath the words, that’s okay too. It just means that I’m using a different lens. It’s all about the insight. x
Hi Mom ,Hello Emmett, I see you guys are up and “on-line” nice and early this morning! And Emmett, don’t worry if you “don’t get it”…I’ll try not to judge you anyway. Ha Ha! (it’s still a little early in the morning and you’re probably still on your 1st cup of coffee). Me too. It’s too early to go “deep”. Hey Mom, I found that quote I was telling you about the other day. It was written by Soren Kierkegaard. Perhaps you know him. Ha Ha! It goes like this. Ahem!…”Life can only be understood backward; It must be lived forward”….or… something like that. Love you guys! Hans
Joy to have Hans jump into the mix of volleys!! (Kierkegaard said a lot of deep, well abstruse, things, like Heraklitus one can call him the “dark philosopher”. Where did you find the quote?) Ditto “love you guys” is
From: Hans Scherer Sent: Monday, March 02, 2015 8:14 AM To: Emmett Holman ; Irmgard Scherer ; Epiphabets ; Doris Koren Cc: Ralph Scherer ; wscherer@masonlive.gmu.edu ; Heide Randall (gmail) ; Jonathan & Christy Scherer Subject: Re: [New post] My.Daily.Distraction ~ Post 130: Judge Not
Hi Mom ,Hello Emmett, I see you guys are up and “on-line” nice and early this morning! And Emmett, don’t worry if you “don’t get it”…I’ll try not to judge you anyway. Ha Ha! (it’s still a little early in the morning and you’re probably still on your 1st cup of coffee). Me too. It’s too early to go “deep”.
Hey Mom, I found that quote I was telling you about the other day. It was written by Soren Kierkegaard. Perhaps you know him. Ha Ha! It goes like this. Ahem!…”Life can only be understood backward; It must be lived forward”….or… something like that. Love you guys! Hans