Slavomir Almajan's Blog

Not once, but it was almost a thought set that I learned to leave with or tortured by in my long struggle to define the today assembly or disassembly of whatever amounts to that allusive word humanity. By simply admitting that there is a struggle in that direction I am setting myself to a never ending road of searching for one, the one, answer that will finally reconcile what I see and experience to what my definition of reality establishes as a rule.  I never ventured in recording my restlessness of thought in; let’s call it, journals of a restless and discontent mind.  I shout to myself the question: “Quo Vadis?”. But that question makes no sense since I admitted that the road I set myself on is endless. How would you assign finality to something that you will never reach? For some human fellows, I am one of them, this venture, the venture of hair splitting will have a personal and deep impact upon the inner self by birthing attitudes that are supposed to fit in and harmonize with the society within our own time of existence. There is a risk that the fruit of our thought struggles will be bitter as we fall into the trap of cynicism or apathy. At the same time we face a huge opportunity that will give us the state of awe and wonder, of hope and joy. I chose the second option therefore the second kind of fruit, as you already guessed.

You see, many of our kind fantasize about a “planet with no borders”, about a “human race” with no distinction bestowed on each individual by our Creator, the heavenly Father. This somehow perceived “romantic, revolutionary thinking” is a decay process, I believe, of human thinking. It is a collapsing of whatever once made us great, made us each a universe within ourselves so uniquely conceived! This uniqueness made love between creature and Creator possible and intimate.

On a larger scale, the nations and kingdoms are unique by God’s design, unique and somehow human like through character traits and purpose. God addresses them specifically by name, God blesses them and God curses them. This planet would be an earth bound hell if it weren’t for nations and borders. Many of us trying to escape persecution of all kinds would have no place to hide, no refuge. What would WWII Europe be without  neutral Switzerland, without independent and well-protected England, without a powerful USA and so on? Maybe the whole world “without borders” would become a global Hitler-made “paradise” or a Stalinist “idyllic”, borderless, to-dream-about state? Or maybe a combination of the two?  How about little us? Well, let us think it over a little bit!  I did not catch WWII but I know a thing or two about the Lenin/Stalin/Ceausescu/Mao/Etc paradigms. I intentionally wrote “paradigms” with bold letters since we use a pre-set number of thinking patterns. We are either born in them or gradually grow in these patterns. Ceausescu had been drumming the slogan “creation of a new man” because, in his mind, it was the cornerstone of communism’s triumph.  This “new man” envisioned by this ruthless dictator was just a brick, one of the 25 million bricks of Romania conveniently “created” by Bucharest propaganda, meant to be no more than some nodding zombies, a quiet tax payer and “enthusiastic” communist elite worshiper. I was right there; I know it to be true! Trying to “create” a “new man” was in fact usurping God and empowering the agents of darkness.  Creating a “new man” meant destruction of the old man.  Every free thinker or everyone who tried to think for himself was a “counter-revolutionary power” and had to be annihilated.  The jails of communist countries were full not with criminals but with priests, pastors, well-to-do individuals, philosophers, historians, poets, novelists, musicians and pre-revolution politicians. At the same time, the West was refreshed by the incoming asylum seekers who did their best to make the world aware of the horrors of the systems where being unique was a crime, where the freedom to think was an unaffordable luxury and an unpardonable sin, where dreaming big had been forgotten.

What am I saying? Praise God for nations with borders, unique in culture and history, unique in the divine purpose of their existence.  Praise God for each of my fellow humans, for their input in shaping the unique me. No, we are not bricks, mere bricks in somebody else’s towers. Yes, we are rocks; uniquely shaped rocks placed in temples of beauty and harmony by the marvelous skill of the Great Builder, our Lord Jesus Christ.

With this “Journals of Loneliness” series I will focus on the terror of spiritual destruction of human beings and their communities that once made this world of ours an oasis of all opportunities and all possibilities.

I hope you will be with me as I so often feel like the poet of the Russian prairies, Sergei Yesenin:

“Whom shall I call on? Who will share with me/The wretched happiness of staying alive?”