I do not feel "chosen"

                                                             I do not feel "chosen"
                             Hal Pepinsky, pepinsky@indiana.edu, "peacemaking" at pepinsky.blogspot.com
                                                               February 17, 2014

      Someone responded to my miracle this morning, celebrating it in a manner that suggest I might be specially chosen by God.  To me, that would make be blasphemous, as I explained thus:

Jennifer, thank you so much.  I'm sure God appreciates love being appreciated and noticed as a natural guide to making peace where we encounter violence.  I am also aware that even with my privilege as a white man whose parents encouraged him to question even what they did, having gone to a school that believes grading and testing is as absurd as I do, my soul was unafraid to let God show me more, and so I was overcome by healing energy that flows through all of us if only, in the course of our journeys of living and learning for ourselves (in my case a mere 69 years of suffering and hurting others without noticing and all the things that led me to perform to others rather than just, as in "lecture," speaking from the heart without notes, let alone powerpoint.  Which is to say that I know that God did not "choose" me, but that I accepted the sinner that remains in my mortal way of relating with you and with anyone else I meet.  Once I could tell myself that I could accept that in our lives, the violent things we do, the culture that is within us, the one that tells us to shut up, learn the right answers, never do the wrong thing or make the same mistake again.  That any human being can do that is blasphemy, the devil speaking through him or her, to me.

Thank you for your appreciation and for giving me a reason to explain my miracle.  I think I'll make this response into a blog post.  Thanks for that.  I'm always interested in knowing more about anyone who connects with me.  How about you?  I suppose you know that Ed McGarrell and Steve Cermak were my colleagues in Bloomington, friends too.  Say hi to them and tell me more about yourself and your studies if you have a chance.  l&p hal