Monday, August 11, 2014

In a Foreign Country

Chapter 1

“Instead of seeming very innocent, they could try to be the same as everybody else!” Tony said.
His sister shrugged. “Perhaps everybody else is that way, here in this country.”

“Erica,” Tony insisted, “they don't have to be praying all the time as if they were supposedly not mature if they didn't! Look at them! They're totally ridiculous compared to us!”

Erica shrugged once more. “I'm not sure, Tony. I guess they feel that the mercy they want becomes greater if they keep doing it. ... So where's the problem you see with it. ... Besides, they're not quite praying, bro! Daddy has said that it's called 'meditating'. It's something the Hindus do instead of prayer, he said.”

“I know! But that's just their word for it!”

His sister studied him for a while. “Don't you think we perhaps aughta pray in our way more often, instead?”

He looked astonished. “No way!” he burst out.

“Why not?!”

“Because there's no reason to pray more than twice a day, if you don't wanna become a monk or a nun or something!”

“How do you know?”

He sighed in a way that indicated that he was becoming impatient with her.

“Because no one else that I know does! That's why!”

She looked at him, then indicated the three meditating Hindus. “How about them, then? I see it as if they are already known for us!”

“I mean whites!” he said. “Not Asians!”

“Oh, that's what? So, then do you feel we should be in America instead? There we could take for granted God doesn't need to be prayed a whole lot more to!”

“I'm not sure about that!”

“I'm not sure about you, then, why you don't see it in those people that they are exactly like us, only they don't know about Christ!”

“Since they don't know about Him, they are perhaps like the Jews, but not like real people!”

“I'm truthfully into that daddy wouldn't be doing business with them if so!” she retorted.

“Don't be too sure!” he answered with solemn disgust.

Chapter 2

Later that day, Tony saw his sister sitting in the family's back yard, talking to one of the Hindus. It was not he who had insisted that they weren't trustworthy, but he still was annoyed at her attitude about them. So he went up to them and said: “How do you feel that it's worth it to ignore that they possibly can become tricky, Erica?”

The man she was talking to looked at him, with a sincere grin on his face. After a while he stammered: “You can trust that we are polite! I say you can rust that we are real!!”

He looked at him, then at his sister. She responded by saying “You shouldn't come here and interrupt me! I'm here on my own accord! Besides what's there to say that they are not as trustworthy as anybody?!”

He drew his breath in a way that sounded scornful and a bit like a hiss. But after a while he changed his mind. “OK, sis, since you're two years older than I, perhaps I can let you seem to know what you're doing!”

“I insist,” the Indian said, “that you have not to fear that I and she can communicate this openly.”

He looked at them. “I guess I can accept it if you tell me what it's all about,” he said after a while.

“Good!” they both said.

“Then,” the Hindu said, “I will summarize: As I said, karma is that when there is a good or an evil in that you treat others one way, then, sooner or later, that same amount good or evil will come back to you. It sometimes is not until next life. Now, your brother can understand the basic issue of believing the way we have it one should believe.”

“Yeah,” she said. “But I'm not so sure that he cares about knowing it!”

Tony looked at them and said: “I don't know either as a matter of fact!”

They continued talking for a while, and both Erica and Tony learned something about reincarnation and the way the man thought karma could be certified in the next life, if not earlier.

Chapter 3

At dinner, Tony said: “Erica, what do you feel about what that Hindu said, that he feels that it's safe to assume there's reciprocity rather than God?”

“He didn't say that!” Erica answered. “He said that God's name is Vishnu and that he rules by making karma the all-accepted above-all rule about everything!”

“He also said that Jesus is not very interesting for him! Thereby he is an evil man! We should not trust those evil creatures and we aughta return to the United States!”

Their parents both looked a bit chocked at this. After a few moments silence their father answered: “No! I have business here! They are not extremely dangerous!”

Their mother broke in and said: “David, maybe he's right! They are unchristian. We can not be trusting them!”

David sighed. “Elsie,” he said, “You should not try to understand what's going on here!”

She looked astonished. “Are you sure, David?”she asked, with a solemn smug.

Erica looked at her. “I can't believe my eyes and ears!” she burst out.

Elsie looked at her with some scorn in her eyes. “You know that even your dad has the notion of them as dangerous! Now we are to be careful about them! Isn't that right David?”

David looked back, and said:” I feel that she is off limits for sure! But I also feel that this is a family that should be into the business of communicating with every kind of person - at least the pious ones.”

“Oh, pious indeed, they are!” she said with an edge of hatred to her voice.

Erica began crying. Her mother looked at her with pity. “I see they've really got you going for them! I can't help but to trust they will ruin the year you have here, even more than already if you don't be good and stay away from talking to them from now on!”

'Tony looked a bit troubled. “I guess I agree, mom,” he said after a while. “She should quit talking to those Indians!”

Their mother gave a sigh of relief. After a while she looked at her daughter and said rather sternly: “Promise me you won't be talking at all, that is if you can help it, with them again.”

“I guess I'll have to promise mom,” she answered. “But if I have to stop talking to them, then what happens to that daddy has to close those business deals with them?”

David looked at them. He cleared his throat. “No!” he said. “No, I can't insist on that she should have to be on oath about that!”

“I don't like it!” she retorted. But the rest of her family agreed upon the opposite.

Chapter 4

The next day, after church, Erica finished her homework and then went down to a park nearby. There she met an Indian woman, who was sitting on a park bench. She seated herself to her right.

The woman looked up for a while and smiled. Erica smiled back. “Hi,” she said.

The woman smiled again and asked: “Do you feel that you can be free here in our country to actually talk to us?”

Erica chuckled a little, but looked sad. “I almost can't,” she answered. “The other day my mother tried to make me promise not to ever speak to any of you again!”

“If she did, then what does she mean that it could lead to that she don't and I do have to be treated that way?”

Erica thought for a while. “I'm not too sure about it!” she said at last.

“I say you have to understand us as well as they them who they doing business with!”

Erica sighed at her lack of correct language. Then she chuckled again. “I suppose we could be friends, then, you and I, right?”

The Indian woman looked at her. “I do not feel sure what we are to be friends about, then!”

She sighed again before responding: “I feel that we could be friends about that religion isn't supposed to be so sophisticated at saying that everybody else is wrong!”

“I suppose we already have!” was the answer she received.

Erica thought for a while, then she dared ask her: “Why do you feel that karma should be perceived as the rule to govern us all, when we all feel free to be of God simply by rescue of Jesus being there?”

The woman looked thoughtful for long while. “I think, perhaps,” she said at last, “it's about that karma does take the long time it should take for God to say to himself that there can be trust in everyone. Because if God does not insist on being thorough, then the devil, as you might say, would be there and like you for being as good as he seemingly is! ... I mean they should talk to their God enough for that the God should be smart at caring for the real faith, and that takes fairly many reincarnations!”

Erika looked very thoughtful at this. “Wow!” she said at last.

Chapter 5

When home, Erica tried to speak to her brother about what she had learned: “Their piety is almost as through as ours! It's just that instead of Jesus they have it that God takes a whole lot of time for His trust to be thorough and working so well so that the devil - as we do say it - can't seduce us all.”

“I can't say he hasn't gotten them into speaking about him as though they were sure about what they want, and not as it really is, that they cannot see the real God unless they have Jesus!”

Erica looked thoughtful for a while, then she said: “I don't feel that it's Jesus only who should be an assumed solution! For we who are of God, we all assume there to be a solution in both Him and also in the situations that we are in!”

Now he looked thoughtful for a while. “I guess you have a point. But we still have Jesus and they don't!”
“I don't think we are into that God should be thorough if we don't try to give them a chance!”

He looked at her. “Yes, we are into that! It's in the bible that we should be timid and smart at trying to be faithful even without those people around!”

“It's fairly unfair to say they're evil even without them trying to be into trying scorn our people in the first place!”

“In that case they should have their minds up to the change there is to be in that Jesus Christ is for all and that he always will be, so that their minds will become so solemn in their attitudes that they are not of the devil, but of God, like us!”

Erica looked at her brother. “I don't think they aren't very solemn!”

He looked at her. “You don't!?” there was an edge of hatred in his eyes.

She looked down. “I can hardly say it to myself, that this woman I talked to was anything but solemn - apart from being unfit for white type of life, of course!”

He looked at her and sighed grimly. “OK,” he said at last. “So if you insist, there'll have to be the reprisals from the Christ, in that they should be cunning at having it their mercy is of God, but that we are of course natural for it!”

She looked down and sighed. “Yeah. I guess, then,” she answered after a while.

Chapter 6

“It's not all about love, then, is it?!” Erica asked her family at dinner that night. “Our religion is about despising other people! As long as they are below you, you feel that they should be seen as unworthy of a merciful treatment!”

Her mother cried. “How can you be so cruel!” she said. “Now that I have had this from you, there'll be no more escapes from that you are of satan! It'll be you, and that's forever, who'll be teh worst of this family on this planet!”

Her father looked at her. “It's not you that we can be trusting anymore! As far as this family is concerned, you are are a stranger from now on! Now go straight up to your room and start packing your things. You'll have to leave to night! If you can, you'll be able to sleep with those Indians you were so fond about!”

Her mother half giggled in a way that sounded almost like she snorted. Her brother looked solemn, but didn't say, nor seem to want to indicate, anything. She looked at them, but there was no way to have it seem like they would be taking it back! They sat there, and after a short pause her mother began eating. Soon after her brother and father did too.