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Primitive religion is not believed, it is danced!

Arthur Darby Nock

Earth's crammed with heaven,
And every common bush afire with God;
And only he who sees takes off his shoes;
The rest sit round it and pluck blackberries.

Elizabeth Browning



Saturday, July 9, 2016

The Torn Soul

“Spirituality is not to be learned by flight from the world, or by running away from things, or by turning solitary and going apart from the world. Rather, we must learn an inner solitude wherever or with whomsoever we may be. We must learn to penetrate things and find God there.”
                                                                                                      Meister Eckhart
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my soul, at times
feels torn apart

it is savaged
by the hate and anger that permeates our world

there are wars and rumors of wars
bombs in Baghdad and Istanbul
destroying lives that matter

there are images of a black man
bleeding to death in the front seat of his car
while a 4 year old pleads in the background
all for no good reason

there are people in power
and people who want to be in power
who act like bullies
as if a lack of empathy
a willingness to use and abuse power,
and a disregard for all but themselves
qualifies them to be a leader

there are parents rejecting their children
because they were born gay, or lesbian

there are church people who present God
as a God of hate (and act accordingly) instead of a God of love
and crush the spirit of the weak and vulnerable

there are people on the street
invisible and neglected

people with addictions, judged and scorned

poor people shamed

mentally ill people treated as non-persons

I cannot shut my ears to the sounds of hate
I cannot shut my eyes to injustice
I cannot close my heart to the vulnerable and oppressed

I must see it all
hear it all
take it all in

how do I survive this?
how do I carry it?
I allow the pain, the horror
yes the blood to “melt my heart”  (Thanks to Morgan Guyton)
the way the blood of Jesus was intended to change the hearts of all humanity

and I allow the Sacred Presence
to move me
not just to the pain, but into the pain

and from that place
that place

perhaps it is the foot of the cross,
allow Sacred Presence to
transform what I feel and think
about what I see and hear and experience
into something
new

into a resolution
to respond to what I see, and hear, and feel
with committed, purposeful, active
practical
challenging
transformative
compassionate
reconciling

love

this is complex
and I do not have a good answer
about how to balance confrontation with compassion
and anger with peace

about how to move from judgment to understanding
I cannot always do it

I only know that sometimes
all I can do so go out
in the early dawn
and watch the sun rise into a peaceful sky

and in that solitude
go deep into my soul
and find
the Sacred

in it all

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