Many years ago, hippie looking Marash Girl, whose residence at the time was 89B Mt. Vernon Street, Beacon Hill, Boston, walked into one of Boston's high end antique jewelry shops -- Bond Jewelers on Park Street -- a shop presumably "for Yankees only". She asked the owner, an older grey-haired gentleman, to show her one of the pieces that was in the shop window, but the owner refused with the words, "No, you can't afford that!" Taken aback, Marash Girl thanked him and asked for his card.
As it turned out, his name was Hekimian, he was a fellow Armenian, and after some conversation, Marash Girl discovered that he was a survivor of the Armenian Genocide, just like her dad. Marash Girl convinced him to allow her to interview him on tape in the not too distant future, and she did. She recorded his history for posterity, an oral history which is now available on file at the Armenian Museum of America in Watertown, Massachusetts.
He never did show her that antique piece in the window, although he gifted her with an equally beautiful piece after she had completed interviewing him for the (then) Armenian Library and Museum of America.
The moral of the story?
We are called to be unoffendable, to walk in a spirit of forgiveness, by our lord Jesus, the Christ. In that way, we are loving our neighbor as ourselves, inseparable from loving God, the latter is a summation of the law by which we are to live. When we obey God, we are blessed, when we do not, we miss out on his blessing. The blessing is different, given the situation, and the mind of God. It is sometimes material, sometimes not, sometimes temporal, sometimes not. What is certain is that the blessing is there, even if we are not sensitive enough, or humble enough, to recognize it.
ReplyDeleteAs Tevya said, "What is the moral of my story? All my stories have morals."
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