On a CBS news program, for Mother’s Day, 2014, the story was told of a family with something of a bizarre history. The father, a certified anthropologist, was researching a primitive tribe near the headwaters of the Orinoco River in South America. It required significant effort to get to the tribe, but the professor was tenacious for purpose, and proceeded with his appointed task, in an accepting spirit for the culture odd by nearly all standards of modern society. One of the young women, barely out of her childhood caught his attention. They synchronized well, and cared for each other. They were married, and he took his young bride to America when he returned home. She adapted, or appeared to do so, to the new and strange culture of electronics, machinery, sealed houses, and all that makes up American life. She bore three children, and followed American ways, going to the beach for summer, and doing the things Americans did, including clothing styles from dresses, slacks, even bikinis. When her eldest son was about ten years of age, she told her husband she would like to visit her parental family and tribe. And, so she did. She never returned to America. The husband/father managed the matter as many intellectuals do, as part of the driving force of native cultures, and he got on with his life, caring for the children. The elder son became bitter that his mother had abandoned him. He reported to others that she died in an auto accident and that was the reason he had no mother. In adult years the elder son determined to find his mother, if she was alive, and discover what would permit her to leave her caring family and that without contact for years – and return to a culture that offered nothing that developed societies could offer for comfort and achievement. With much effort he found her. She was in primitive circumstance wearing only a loin cloth, living in camping-like housing of temporary construction from jungle materials. Her face was punctured with reeds that were presumed to add beauty to her, but must have been inconvenient for some of her chores. She was warm towards her son, offered him the best of the food that she had, the head of a fish. She instructed him to eat it. (The program did not record his response to her suggestion.) She was sincerely concerned about those she left in America, asked him not to wait so long without coming to see her again. And so the story proceeded. He left a changed person, and the center of a program that really gave no answers except forgiveness, and an effort to understand those who are different than oneself. Her explanation of the nature of the mechanized society, the disregard for the values of human beings in flashing lights, fast cars, and the structures of a sophisticated society had become so threatening to her that she could not return to it though it cost the family that missed her. She would not have survived, and might have given her family more problems than her abandonment had done. The son understood, and became open to discuss the mother who gave him life, and with love born of forgiveness. There also seemed born respect and love.
The events of this family can’t be fully explained. There are mysteries in it. Right and wrong are not easily understood and managed. Christians have learned to manage the wrongs they experience both in themselves and with others with the humility of penitence (openness about their own weaknesses) and the desire for forgiveness from those affected by the omissions or commitments of the real or presumed offender. Was this family experience paradoxical or contradictory? We may not have to decide, if the spirit of forgiveness to be given/received is practiced so to account for the life and experiences of imperfect human beings in an imperfect world. My wife now deceased, in her nature and preferences, would have long before died if left to the culture most desired by the person/wife/mother of the story above. There is understanding, and that should be built into the education of the peoples of the world. First, that we were created to freedom, a need for life if living that life is to be genuine, and does not interfere with the freedom of others; second that we were made to love, not only the family of our birth, but the whole of our context of life; third that our cultures are what we are given for order in our lives and by which we learn to function as a person with other persons so to make the best life with that available to us; and, fourth to find a faith that offers peace in something that is beyond the best or the worst that we find in the course of natural life. In this the born again experience has gained personal Christ to make of us citizens of his kingdom. *Mark W. Lee, Sr. — 2016, 2020