This is a survival mechanism, and hard, for me at least, to overcome. Other people live differently than I do. The social barriers that stand between members of different families are hard enough to traverse, as any two people in a committed relationship have learned. The barriers between different cultures are even harder to cross. I am biologically programmed to be afraid of what I don't understand, but if I cater to my fear, I never come to understanding.
Fear perpetuates itself.
But so can love, if it gets a chance. But my fear doesn't keep God from calling me. I come back to the two images of a boat on the sea in a storm. And one message that these images convey to me is the message that God is in the storm, too. In the past few weeks, I've been using the image of water as a metaphor for God's presence in our lives, and I'm afraid that this, too, is a metaphor, this stormy sea that threatens to swamp those of us who live on it.