Slipping on a new pair of moccasins

There is a Native American saying that “to truly understand we must walk a mile in another’s moccasins.” What’s not often quoted, however, is the other half of that statement: “Before we can walk in another person’s moccasins, we must first take off our own.”

Have you learned to take off your own moccasins?

Have you slid your feet into another’s?

To whom are you now more connected?

Is there more that you can see?

Is there more for you to understand?

Have you experienced anything about God?

In which ways have you experienced different moccasins as a blessing?

Perhaps it is an arthritic inability to bend over and take off my moccasins that leaves me unable to comprehend those who would [you fill in the blank(s)].

There are so many things I’ve learned by trying on those different shoes. So much more I have to learn by reflecting on life from a different vantage point.

One particular set of moccasins, this time combat boots, we’re trying on for size is living through our son Joseph’s Navy deployment tour on the ground in Iraq. By early January when many of you are reading this article Joe will have reached the half way point in his opportunity to see the birthplace of Sumerian civilization up-close and personal.

These past three months have been a convergence of emotions for Marian and I, Caitlyn, and especially Joe as we learn in new ways to live with hope and fear, joy and sadness, calm and concern, opportunity and duty. We’ve been learning as Viktor Frankl taught so eloquently to create meaning in circumstances that may defy it. Learning to be “good to go” … having what we need as together as can be to meet the unexpected. Experiencing new ways to comprehend the incomprehensibility of God and humankind. And becoming forever more deeply connected with those directly touched and altered by the face of war.

What I do not know about another’s joy and pain leaves me and them impoverished. What I experience of another’s joy and pain give me a foretaste of heaven.

Shalom / A’ salaam / Peace

Russ Ditzel

Adsum: January – February 2007