The other day, I’m driving through a parking lot. Some of the aisles in the parking lot are one-way traffic, while others are two-way traffic. This lady is driving towards me on a two-way traffic aisle, clearly marked by large white arrows pointing in both directions, painted on the paved surface. She is driving mostly in the middle of the aisle, but partially on my side. I stop, she stops and then she begins shaking her fist at me and cursing. She pulls back toward her side of the aisle and so I move forward. When I get near to her car she is still shaking her fist and cursing at me and screaming, “This is a one-way, you @#$%$%&*.”
Well, it really wasn’t a one-way and she was actually positioned so that the arrows that I mentioned were just in front of her car, within her vision, while she was screaming at me. She had also driven over two other painted arrows on her route to get to the spot she was in. I glanced back at her after I had passed and saw that in her non-shaking fist was a cell phone, which she was returning to her ear.
I said nothing, indicated nothing to her, did not respond, I did not retaliate; I did not gesture, comment or give her a dirty look. I pretended she had made an honest mistake and moved on with my day. I couldn’t resist, however, calling a friend to tell them about the incident and the rather interesting absurdity of it all.
It is pretty amazing how many times I’ve experienced the struggles of human beings as they live together in close proximity. It is interesting to note the frequency with which we find ourselves dealing with our own humanity and the humanity of others. It is also amazing that we survive our own humanity and the chronic nature with which it constantly reveals itself and afflicts us.
I often reflect upon this enigma and sit in wonder that we don’t actually fight with each other more often than we do. It seems that the more that we are called to deal with each other’s chronic human afflictions, the more challenging it becomes not to reveal the chronic flaws of our own humanity.
We find then that the flesh is weak. We find that to respond out of our humanity and the flaws of our flesh, to the flaws that we each encounter as they are displayed and acted out through the humanity of others in their flesh, only serves to increase the trouble and the chronic limitations of our humanity. We must learn instead to live by the Spirit of God. This alone will change the world and through this change, serve to heal our chronically struggling humanity. Blessings!

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