This Fallen World

This evening I've been mulling over events of the last few days, and find my attitude softening, ever so slightly. I'm reminded, as if I need reminding, that life on earth is never going to be as God had originally intended for any of us, and that sometimes we are besieged by an ugliness over which we we have no control.

Yesterday was the first time in my life I have ever reported anyone for sexual harassment.  Not someone I worked with or knew, but someone here at the farm on a construction crew. Perhaps there are women who would not have found his behavior offensive, but I was shaken and fearful,even,of having to be around him for the duration of their work.  I talked with the HR woman for our organization and was blessed by her compassion and determination that it would not happen again, and sure enough, she made good on her promise.  But I keep wishing that I could have been more...more...I don't know exactly.  More effective, maybe. Not just for myself but for other women this man must surely make uncomfortable, and even for the man, himself. I wasn't sure whether he spoke English , and so did not attempt the conversation that was playing in my mind, but I wish I had felt that I could have. I wanted to ask him whether he had a daughter and if so, did he want her to someday feel as I did, to be treated as though she were nothing more than a thing to be toyed with for some perverted man's amusement.  What would he have said, I wonder. And I wonder whether that might have been the more redemptive approach, holding some possibility of change.  

There is constant construction going on at the farm right now, land being torn up, trees being torn down, continual noise and, what seems to me, carnage. Those who initiated and have made the decision that this project will go forward do not spend time on the land, be it this or any other. They work in offices and talk about "green living" and how this current effort will be a grand example of the same. And perhaps it will be, someday, when all the equipment is gone and top soil has been spread and new plants are growing where the old ones were ripped from the earth. Right now,all I see is destruction and sadness and some days I feel as though I hear the earth's cries.

Being hard on the man who frightened me and those who have decided to injure this land comes easily to me, and yet, if I am honest, I know that such is not the right response. I was reading of St Francis this evening, who showed mercy to those who were in the wrong, just as he did those who were in the right. Not condoning their behavior, but extending grace, that they might turn to God's also.  And so I am thinking about both as I retire for the night...thinking about those who cause pain and about the possibilities for redemption.  Both are pieces of living in this fallen world, as one who loves Jesus. I have more growing to do and hope that I can learn to hold the sometimes ugliness of this world and the beauty of forgiveness and redemption in tandem. Jesus did, and Francis did, and perhaps, someday, so can I.