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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



Wednesday, August 22, 2018

The Blinds are Broken


“We are tied together in the single garment of destiny, caught in an inescapable network of humanity. And whatever affects one directly affects all indirectly. For some strange reason I can never be what I ought to be until you are what you ought to be. And you can never be what you ought to be until I am what I ought to be. This is the way God’s universe is made; this is the way it is structured.”
                                                                                                         Martin Luther King
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There is a place
Where all the power hungry
Greedy
Angry
Frightened souls are wrong

There is something missing
From the agenda of the far right
From the capitalist ideology of the very rich
From the frightened isolationism of the white nationalists

While they shout about excluding those who are not like them
And grasp resources to themselves
And use and misuse power for their own benefit

They forget that in the divine design
We all participate in something much vaster than ourselves
In something big

In a reality (I call it God), a force that is both unity and diversity
Power and love

We are bound together
And if one’s soul is awake at all
It cannot ignore, oppress, minimize, exclude,
Those other souls who inhabit this planet

We are bound together

I have powerful memories
Of trying to eat dinner in parts of the world
Where radical inequity exists
I can remember, picking at a meal
Because outside the window of the restaurant, destitute people
Lay crumpled on the ground

That sight hammered my soul
But many chatted, and sipped their wine
And simply didn’t care

The restaurant owner, seeing the distress of our small group
Had a solution
He pulled down the blind

We cannot pull down the blind
We cannot shutter our souls
To those hungry in our streets
To those feeling violence and oppression, coming to our borders, seeking help
To the people of color who walk the streets in fear
Of police violence against them
Of immigrant workers waiting to hear the echo of boot as ICE comes to arrest them
Of mentally ill people who struggle to stay rooted in this reality

Because we are bound together
And I cannot be who I ought to be, and can be
Until those around me are who they ought to be
And can be

Thus I pay my taxes without complaint
Thus I resist those who would rob others of their rights
Thus is struggle with my own greed
And my own need for power

Thus I try to be generous when I can
Kind when the opportunity presents
Loving, always

For me the blinds are broken
I can no longer hide
I can no longer shout America First
I can no longer simply ‘take care of number one”
And celebrate those things that help me but hurt others

It Is true, sadly
That sometimes I do act out of greed
I am protective
I do participate in that essential selfishness that is so much
A part of American culture

But the blinds are up
Mea Culpa
Kyrie Eleison
Auxilium me amare


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