Where I Come From

Tempted and tried, we're oft made to wonder

Why it should be thus all the day long;

While there are others living about us,

Never molested, though in the wrong.

When death has come and taken our loved ones

It leaves our home so lonely and drear

Then do we wonder why others prosper

Living so wicked year after year.

If I could pick any work of poetry to summarize the culture in which I was raised, these are the verses I would pick.  Few other communities are so willing to complain to God.  In most cultures, as far as I can tell, they teach children that life is unfair and that you are supposed to deal with it.  But we were taught to brood on the unfairness of it all -- even in church.

Now we can go back and forth on the advantages and disadvantages of this attitude.  My own view is that blessed are they which do hunger and thirst after righteousness:  for they shall be filled.  And if my culture is one that broods on injustice, it is also very capable of imagining grace:

Faithful 'til death, said our loving Master

A few more days to labor and wait

Toils of the road will then seem as nothing

As we sweep through the beautiful gates.