Today the people I am staying with commented how the person who owns the house that we are renting for the Feast of Tabernacles outside of Redmond must have come from the city because they sealed off all their windows from the outside world, even as there is a beautiful babbling creek that winds its way behind the place. I find it curious that one would try to wall themselves off from the effect of the outside world even as they choose to stay in a place whose entire appeal is that same outside world. It is as if one wants to dance around in puddles or play in the piles of leaves or traipse around in the wilderness without bringing any of that in the house, often not wanting to see what is on the outside at times, even if what is outside is breathtakingly beautiful.
On the drive from that place to church services, I drive along the back way on Eagle Creek Blvd until it reaches SR 126. To say that this route was twisty and breathtakingly beautiful would be an immense understatement. It is tempting to look across the landscape to the beauty of the east side of the Cascade range that can be seen in a panoramic view and to forget that one is driving along a road that requires a great deal of attention and that to be distracted by that beauty is a hazardous task, especially when one is treating the road like a qualifying course to the 24 Hours of Le Mans. One has to make a decision, to either drive slowly enough to be able to safely appreciate the beauty that is all around, or to focus oneself on the task at hand, namely rushing off hither and yon, and not let one get distracted by the beauty that leads to danger. Alternatively, one can choose each task some of the time, depending on the specific circumstances at hand.
Recently it has been announced that a group of hackers is looking to expose about 200,000 photos taken from Snapchat, a popular cell phone app, especially among younger people. Dealing with technology and its safety can be a difficult problem, since whatever allows one a great deal of contact with the outer world also allows the potential for threats. It is a difficult task to properly manage those threats and keep them off even as one seeks to enjoy the greater connectivity that results from the technology [1]. When one puts one’s life out in the open, like Miss Anna Nalick [2], we must assume that what we put online could potentially be viewed by anyone, and that not everyone is going to have good and noble purposes with that knowledge, but will use it for gossip or mischief. We must therefore assume that whatever we say is going to be open to the world at large, and we have to accept the possibility that nothing we do will be secret, even if we abhor the corrupt behavior of the wicked.
Life is full of the tension between beauty and danger. In some sense, all interaction with others is filled with danger. Whenever we open ourselves up to others, we open ourselves up to hurt and pain, because other people will disappoint us and will act in ways that make us feel anxious and uncomfortable and even afraid, especially if we are fairly sensitive people to begin with. Yet the alternative is to live in loneliness and desolation and to be cut off from the encouragement and support of others. We must therefore accept that there is danger as a result of our longings and must seek to manage it as best as possible. In this life the only guarantee is that we will not make it out alive, and all we can choose is how we will live that space of time that we have been made accountable for to fulfill our hopes and dreams and the will of the One who created us in the first place, who uses this life and the dangers of it to teach us and shape us into His image, so that the end result of the pain we face is the beauty we seek.
[1] See, for example:
https://edgeinducedcohesion.wordpress.com/2012/11/21/the-two-waves-of-technology/
[2] https://edgeinducedcohesion.wordpress.com/2013/08/15/breathe-2-am/
Edge Induced Cohesion 