"For what we need to know, of course, is not just that God exists, not just that beyond the steely brightness of the stars there is a cosmic intelligence of some kind that keeps the whole show going, but that there is a God right here in the thick of our day-by-day lives who may not be writing messages about himself in the stars but in one way or another is trying to get messages through our blindness as we move around down here knee-deep in the fragrant muck and misery and marvel of the world. It is not objective proof of God's existence that we want but the experience of God's presence. That is the miracle that we are really after, and that is also, I think, the miracle that we really get."   (An excerpt from Fredrick Buechner's "The Magnificent Defeat")

I wonder sometimes, as I usually do when I get away on a walk for contemplation and nostalgia, and I think about my condition and state of life. Today after watching RahXephon, which is a wonderful anime, I had to think a little. The main character is bonded to this creature/machine that is a living weapon. The weapon and the young man become to interlinked that when the young man suffers extreme emotional shift, the creature responds and acts out this display in kind.

The young man had ust been informed that the world that he knew, Tokyo Jupiter, was not the only place left of earth where there are humans. Instead of the twenty-six million people he knew were alive there are actually six billion. After leavgin his home the young man feels a severe separation anxiety and he quikly isolates himself from the people who had liberated him from the prison-like Tokyo Jupiter. He is placed in a home with a family that has an uncle and a few daughters. He does not get along with the people there are as stated before quickly pulls away from them. The creature responds to this by creating a petrified outer skin.
I thought about this and I wondered if we all do not live with this stone skin or not. I know that I usually live with a partially petrified skin. We, as humans, were made by God to interact with Him, other people, and the world around us. For me, it seems easier to interact with the world than with people, but this is not the way it is meant to be. The world lacks consciousness. Perhaps that is why it is easy for me to interact with? The world does not ask anything of you. It does not judge, want, or expect.....it is just there to interact with. I say that I live with a aprtially petrified outer shell because I do interact with people all the time, but I rarely if ever feel kinship with them.

Like the young man in the anime, it seems as if I am always being tested by other people. In the show the young man is constantly being tested on medically because of his unique bond with the creature. This is comparative to myself in that I am constantly being prodded at by others.....but it is never to acquire knowledge about me, about who I am. It always seems to be a regulated process that involves some sort of script that enables the other person to generalize me in order to find out if I am useful or if I am worthy of having the surface relationships that most people go through their lives being content with. At work things are easy in that I am only expected to work and be kind to others. This is simple because I am not expected to be anything except a had worker that plays for the team. Outside of work I am always being left as feeling inadequate. It is that isolation that comes from not only being misundertood personally, but also from being the outcast even in the surface relational realm. In other words, I always feel like a stranger.

When I was in Hong Kong, things were a bit easier in these aspects. When you are a foreigner, you are expected to be different and strange. Since this is the expectation, that you are not going to fit the mold of a certain group, you are not held to that standard. There is more social grace given to you because of these circumstances. At "home" here in my "own culture" it is as though I am given little to no social grace, and when it is given it is usually because someone is stuck with me on a journey somewhere or because we need to accomplish a job together. As soon as the journey is over it is business as usual and I am being sized up once again. Is it my fault that I walk around with a mostly petrified shell? Am I justified in this, that I do not wish to put the essence of me out for other people to see? Is this a common occurrence or am I dealing with something somewhat out of the norm? I am not distressed by these things because I have dealt with this sensation since I was young, but I am curious.

The one thing I am sure of is this, that in God I can truly be myself. I am understood even when I don't understand what I am saying. At the very least, I know that I am not being judged when I talk to God, I am not being profiled or expected to be a certain way. God is not threatened by my oddities nor is he concerned about discomfort from not understanding me. God is not inconvenienced when I try to say "hi" even when I am awkward. Yeah, He has never let me down.