The good thing about holidays is that there’s more chance to read…
Yesterday I finished ‘The Heart’s Invisible Furies’. John Boyne’s character Cyril is sixty-three. He’s known love, seen suffering, experienced prejudice. His best friends have died and he’s finally re-united with his birth mother. She’s telling him about his father who abandoned her and never met Cyril:
‘The way mother told it he wasn’t necessarily the villain of the piece. Maybe there were no villains in my mother’s story at all. Just men and women, trying to do their best by each other. And failing.’
Perhaps that could be said of all of us – trying to do our best and failing.
I’m now reading ‘Kisses from Katie’, the true story of Katie Davis from Nashville, Tennessee. Katie, at eighteen-years-old, goes to Uganda, experiences the poverty, sees destitute, disease-ridden children, falls in love with the people. Aged nineteen she fosters then adopts fourteen girls. She contrasts life in Uganda with the US, and says:
‘Children want to play. Eat, learn and be loved. We are all the same. We do not live in different worlds; we live in the same world.
People are people. They all need food and water and medicine, but mostly they need love and truth and Jesus…’
These are Cyril’s flawed people with their problems. Katie doesn’t accept it must stay like that. Needs can be met.
Katie’s story isn’t just about social theory. She says:
‘Every day we have a choice. We can stay nestled in our safe, comfortable places… Or we can take a risk, do something to help someone else, make a person smile, change someone’s world. Life to the fullest exists. It’s available. All we have to do is decide to get up and embrace it.’
This morning I’m musing… We’re all the same with our flaws and needs… I can choose the comfortable life, accepting failure… or like Katie I can be proactive, intentional and seek to make a difference.
malcolmsmusings.org 
I’m not too sure Maslow would have put Jesus before before food and water. I think love certainly is important.
https://www.etsy.com/uk/listing/1451849640/maslows-hierarchy-of-needs-poster-uk?affcss=1&utm_source=ran&utm_medium=affiliate&utm_campaign=UK_CSS_css&utm_content=3877586&ranMID=54062&ranEAID=bcLQBVEDxlA&ranSiteID=bcLQBVEDxlA-bcHAwiQnxAfUUVM.a1zLlw&AffGroup=CSS
Possibly love and belief (belonging) would come up the hierarchy a bit. But still very important. We are by nature gregarious and enjoy the comfort and support of people of similar beliefs and values.
By the way, I hope you’re enjoying your holiday. Malcolm, you’re becoming like the travelling Alan Wicker.
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I understand your point, Alan. We certainly know the Maslow stuff – it’s certainly really helpful. I guess that the true Jesus path is one of holistic care – which is certainly the way that Katie Davis expressed her faith. I think what has challenged me is the practical giving love that she showed that knows no boundaries.
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I read an article about Katie’s story a few years ago. I’m glad there is now a book out. Being willing to risk everything because of God’s call, is what faith is all about. We are all the same, though our callings are all unique. We each have to take our own leap as Katie did, no matter the detractors or our personal fears.
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One of the lessons that Katie Davis teaches me, Pete, is that we learn about our faith from everybody – even the least expected people. She learnt from the children… we learn from an eighteen-year-old. Sometimes I think we just expect to learn from ‘mature Christians’.
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