No Man is an Island

My mother did not like to hear the "old stories" nor did she like to tell them.  Her childhood must have been painful to her since her mother died when she was 9 and her father when she was two and she was shoved around with siblings.   But she would, perhaps, been willing to go on some kind of an autobiographical journal, had she realized the words of John Donne:  "No man is an island, entirely of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main."

Misunderstandings of the past often have a profound effect on the future.  As I have looked back to my blogs in the last years, they are crammed with Cooper problems;  in fact, they have enveloped my life and soul in negative ways.  I almost want to run to get away from the insanity of all of it.   But then I realize, anew, that that is who I am and where I have been put on this earth and I can't "escape my raising."  Frederick Buechner, a giant among theological giants, says that all of us misjudge and misunderstand the motives of others and have done so since childhood.  Buechner says that it is through our stories "as I have long believed and often said that God makes himself known to each of us most personally and powerfully.  If this is true, it means that to lose track of our stories is to be profoundly impoverished not only humanly but also spiritually."

So, I must seek to embrace who I am and where I came from and where my ties are.   I must seek to loosen those ties which bind me to a negative past and start afresh.   While I can't escape from my "raising", it is my job to clean out the cobwebs of my mind and reach out in a fresh acceptance of where we are now and how we can walk on and keep the ties of family.  The time for placing blame is over.  Grow up, Jane, and grow!