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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



Thursday, May 3, 2018

forgiveness


“An eye for an eye, and the whole world would be blind.”
― Kahlil Gibran

“Forgiveness means it finally becomes unimportant that you hit back.”
― Anne Lamott
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In my dreams
I am standing again in a field in Kurdistan

The sound of military helicopters growing ever louder
As like vultures
Or is it angels of mercy

They drop from the sky
Disgorging their sad burden

Tattered  and wet
Fragile with hypothermia
Bent with the burden of the precious bundles they hold in their arms

Barely protected from the bitter weather
By the rags with which they are wrapped

We tried, Oh we tried
But they were too weak
Too far gone
And so, as we held them, they died

These little innocents
Their faces drawn and grey white

This was the fruit of war

I wake and remember
Other babies, starving to death in Africa
Shot in their classrooms in America
Poisoned in Syria
Shot and bombed in Gaza

So many children, destroyed
The fruit of prejudice, and anger, and hate
The fruit of violence
The fruit of our need for power
The fruit of our Greed

As I walk in the snow, in the silent peace
In the relative safety of rural Oregon
I wonder how we respond?


Is the answer missiles, bombs, drones
Is the answer violence?
Has that ever worked?  Really?
Even when it appears to have benefited the world,
Were not the seeds of hate sown?
Was not the groundwork laid for the next conflict?

There is no war to end all wars
There is only war after war

We must go a different way
We must walk a different path
And it will not be an easy path I fear
We must walk the path of love

And it takes more strength to love in the face of hate
Than it does to return hate
I am not sure I am strong enough to do that

Very few, in the history of the world have been

One was
That one who “humbled himself”
And refused to take on the way of power, although he could have
And walked in love all the way to the cross
to say in a way unmistakable

this is how it ends
the endless cycle of violence and retribution
this is how it ends

How do we approximate that way?
What does it look like, today?
God help me, I do not know

But I am fairly certain it does not look like missiles
Hurled into space
It does not look like dying babies
It does not look like chronic retribution

It looks as radical and costly as the cross

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