I am a wanderer. I would say that I am a seeker, but sometimes I have no idea what I might be seeking, so I will stick with wanderer. This blog is more a public journal than anything. I don't claim to have life figured out. I simply stumble from mystery to mystery, and share my reflections along the way. Sometimes I feel burdened, and trudge. Sometimes? Well sometimes grace breaks through, and its time to dance.
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
_______________________________________________________________
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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