A friend called today. She said she feels that she is starting to see the reality of people by the way they are reacting. And I think it is true. We are all living more of our lives on-line. People are getting a longer snapshot of who we are, they are becoming more of a fly on the wall in our lives.
I find it almost as fascinating as the Zoom bookshelves, but not quite.
People can sometimes surprise you. I once chatted to a Christian in the USA (that I had known for over 10 years) about an issue, to be told “it’s only blacks”.
In the UK we have to have safeguarding policies when we are engaged with vulnerable adults. When I was drafting our policy I was challenged. It is normal to say “We vet people and if they have are dodgy we exclude them”. But we have a problem. We work with dodgy people – drug addicts, criminals and we will even work with people that have committed sex crimes (prison tends to have a lot of these dodgy people). In the end we opted to say “We recognize the possibilities of transformation in people’s lives and the chance of new beginnings.”
So often we have a one way door to exclusion. People are pushed overboard from the good ship normal society because they don’t conform. We offer them a ladder without steps for them to climb back on board as we push them down with long poles. Then we sing our songs about rebellion from oppression.
The Christian message is not as clear cut as some might have you believe in areas like this. The Jesus that overturned tables and whipped the money changers also said forgive them about the people that tortured and killed him (and many others). I can’t claim to have any rules that makes sense of this, it would be nice to say Jesus opposed predators, but those roman soldiers were certainly predators.
I remember one day at school. We were in the senior common room. News came that one of the tougher guys in the room had upset a local criminal, who was coming with his gang to stab him. The room quickly emptied, and soon the gang of about 50 arrived and surrounded the room. Maybe it was stupidity, or maybe something else, but I couldn’t bring myself to leave him alone in that room.
I struggle to find the right balance, but am sure the good ship normal society is not the boat I always feel happy on. I seem to feel more related to those in the water, whether they have jumped there, been thrown there, or just slipped and fell overboard. I get the feeling there will be more people in the water soon. I hope the good ship normal society can change by then.
Anyway, enough of that – on to my third day in the USA – 29th May 2016. This started in Gerlach with a trip to see a geyser and went on to a place called Jackpot in the NW of Nevada.
To the North of Gerlach there are several hot geysers that have formed pillars from the deposits as the water boils off. I drove there in the morning to take some photos. As I stood there in the silence taking photographs I heard a coyote howl in the distance. Then another, and another and another. I couldn’t help but feel they were all chatting about the breakfast that had arrived (me).
There were two places I wanted to visit on the route this day. I wanted to visit Winnemucca – just so I could play the song as I drove there.
The next place I wanted to visit was another ghost town. This time because of the name. Metropolis. I wanted to see where Superman used to live. It was interesting visiting a city that had recently (75 years ago) become a ghost town. The thing that was probably most striking was that there were new burials. I guess some people had a family plot.
I then drove on to a place called Jackpot, just inside Nevada. I had a fantastic hotel. Jackpot is a gambling destination for the people from Idaho – so has good hotels to attract visitors.
This was one of my long drive legs to get me to the area where I had a lot more things to see, as you will find out tomorrow….