I carry You in my heart

It took almost everything I had

To get up and get into the car

In the dry heat of an Eastern Oregon afternoon

I drove the back roads to Wallowa

The small town where many of those I worship with happen to live

As I drove I was haunted

Oppressed

Weighed down

More hate from the White House

More racism

More fuel on the fire of White Supremacy

Another shooting

20 plus people killed why shopping

Who were those people

Hispanic, mostly

Perhaps white

Who were they

What were they shopping for?

Diapers

A birthday gift?

Food?

It doesn’t matter

For they will never return home

Ever

At least they will not return to an earthly home

Because those words, so casually spoken

At a rally of deplorables

“How do we stop ‘the invasion’”

“We shoot them!”

Became real

I carried it with me

The hate, the death, sat in the passenger seat

It took all I could do to drive those 30 miles

Because at that moment the day was full of death

(it would get worse)

Full of little failures

A failure to connect with the sermon passage

A failure to advise

A failure to connect

And then I tapped into so many other failures

As a pastor

A counselor

A friend

A pastor

A person seeking love

And as the miles passed

I wondered, ‘why bother’

What difference will it make

That I made this attempt

What will it change?

I’m still not sure

I hope, I hope against hope

That even with my deficits

I can touch lives one person at a time

I hope that even when I am tired and oppressed

I can find it in me to listen, and care.

I hope, that even when I walk in the door

Filled with a kind of rage over what is happening in our country

Filled with sadness over the deaths of innocents

Filled with despair over my capacity to make a difference

Filled with regrets over my own shortcomings, my own failures

I carry with me the Christ

Somewhere

Deep down in my soul

And then this presence

Is

enough

I am what i believe

“Your beliefs become your thoughts

Your thoughts become your words

Your words become your actions

Your actions become your destiny.

Mahatma Ghandi,” he said. “There’s more, but I can’t remember it all.”

                                Louise Penny, A Fatal Grace

_____________________________________________________

It is true to say that our beliefs are revealed in our actions

Which means of course, that our actions reveal our beliefs

It is easy to say one believes this, or that

“I believe in Love”

“I believe in Jesus”

“I believe in life”

But words are words, and are the least trustworthy form of communication

Actions?

Well, they are concrete.  And they are what they are.

We generally can’t take them back.

And they speak a thousand words

If I want to know what another person is really all about

If I want to know what I am really all about

Then behaviors may be the key

Instead of asking”What did they say?”

One can ask, “what did they do?”

and seek to find the values and beliefs

that drove those actions

What kind of values and beliefs drive

Violence?

Abuse?

Exclusion?

What kind of values and beliefs drive

Generosity

Kindness?

Inclusion?

Where does one have to be coming from

To cage children?

To exclude another from one’s church?

To hit a spouse?

To get arrested for protesting ?

To gut climate control legislation?

To give to a cause?

To be accepting of all (in behavior not just words)?

It is not infallible

We are complex creatures

But our body or work shouts loudly

About who we are and what we believe

Here are the things

I believe I value

Justice

Equity

Grace

Generosity

God ( who is Love) and God’s way (which is Love)

I believe that we are called to protect the vulnerable

To lift each other up

To make sure we all get there (where ever “there” is) together

With no one, if possible, left behind

I hope my actions reflect this

I suspect they sometimes do

I also suspect they sometimes don’t (I am merely human)

My prayer for myself

Is that I will have values that honor my divine DNA

And that, as I connect with the Sacred within me.

I will live like a Sacred child

Each and every day

Planet of Fools

Martin Luther King preached once on the passage of the rich fool.  He told this story. 

“The other day in Atlanta, the wife of a man had an automobile accident. He received a call that the accident had taken place on the expressway. The first question he asked when he received the call: "How much damage did it do to my Cadillac?" He never asked how his wife was doing. Now that man was a fool, because he had allowed an automobile to become more significant than a person. He wasn’t a fool because he had a Cadillac, he was a fool because he worshiped his Cadillac….

“Somehow in life,”  King continued, “we must know that we must seek first the kingdom of God, and then all of those other things—clothes, houses, cars—will be added unto us. But the problem is all too many people fail to put first things first...”

________________________________________

Sometimes I am a fool

I know that surprises some of you, but its true

Because sometimes

I don’t put first things first

Which of course raises the question,

“What should be first?”

Jesus was unequivocal

The Sacred should be first

In all its forms

We should build “richness towards God”

In other words we should invest in all things Sacred

The planet for example!

God’s first self incarnation

It is Sacred.  We should invest in it

Not rape it, plunder it, abuse it, for the sake of short-term profit

But devote ourselves to the nurture and enjoyment

of the self-expression of God

The Sacred as Sacred

We should invest in that reality in which we

“live and move and have our being” (Acts17)

We should wander, regularly

Into the depths of who we are, and find the Sacred Presence

That IS there

We should become awake to that presence

Nurture it

And allow it to transform us, from the inside out

The Sacred as other people

Oh, yes, God is everywhere

In everyone

In that smiling child in affluent America

In that child crying for its mother on our border

In that young urban professional

In that rural farmer, or rancher

In that young person, old person

Short person, tall person

Slight person, stout person

White person, black or brown person

It is pretty simple really

Being rich towards God is putting God first, and then people

Those beings in whom God dwells

And then?

Well then, as Jesus and Martin so aptly put it

True riches will come

Then meaning will come

Then joy will come

Then love will come

Being rich toward God

All of life will become a treasure

But if we don’t put first things first?

If we seek power first?

Or wealth first?

We see how that plays out every day,

In the greed, and injustice, and inequity…

In the fear, and cruelty that surrounds us.

If we don’t put first things first,

We are fools

Die to live

It’s like when you climb a ladder. When you get to the fourth rung, you may think you are on the highest step and cannot go higher, so you hold on to the fourth rung. But in fact there is a fifth rung; if you want to get to it, you have to be willing to abandon the fourth rung. Ideas and perceptions should be abandoned all the time, to make room for better ideas and truer perceptions. This is why we must always ask ourselves, “Am I sure?

                                                   Thich Nhat Hanh, The Art of Power

______________________________________________________________

Die to live

Give to receive

Lose to win

This is Sacred mathematics at work

As long as we hang on to

Old ideas

Old perceptions

Old fears

Old hopes

Old expectations

Old injuries

Old narratives

Even

Old victories

We will fail to find the truth

And fail to find Sacred vision for ourselves

Our relationships

Our work

Instead we will be stuck

Inside a dense box

Of our own making

We must die

Let go

So that God’s new thing

May emerge in us, and through us

anger

“Anybody can become angry — that is easy, but to be angry with the right person and to the right degree and at the right time and for the right purpose, and in the right way — that is not within everybody's power and is not easy.”

                                                    Aristotle

______________________________________________

I lost a friend on Facebook

Imagine that !

“There is just too much anger here”

She said

That is not a comment one can just ignore

Such comments are kind of like communion

Which is kind of the like the Gospel

Which is very much like the Truth

Beatrice Bruteau, in her book the Holy Thursday Revolution

Has this to say about communion

“I myself think that using the physical act of eating

to express spiritual intimacy is brilliant. 

If a new idea is offered, first we have to be “open to” it. 

Then we have to “take it in”, “receive” it. 

We taste it, “savor” it. 

We may have to “chew on it” for a while. 

Some things we find “hard to swallow”,

some we just can’t “stomach”.

if we have swallowed the idea we have to give ourselves time to “digest” it. 

Perhaps we actually “assimilate” it,

make it part of ourselves, and begin really to live from it. 

So such a comment must be chewed on

Even if it is hard to swallow

And I will admit

I have thought about this myself

About the anger, perhaps even rage, that arises in me

At some of what I see and hear

Is what is happening acceptable?

I don’t think so

Is it appropriate to be angry when people

Vulnerable, and fragile

Are treated with cruelty?

I don’t think so

Is it important to speak out against that which,

From one’s understanding of God as revealed through Jesus,

is wrong?!

Dead wrong?

I think so

But . . .

That dreaded word

But as we respond to that which cannot simply be tolerated

HOW we respond is important

As I think about this it seems appropriate to set some guidelines

At least for myself

First it is much, much better if one attacks the ideas, the words, the actions,

Rather than the person.

I know, I know

It is hard to separate the person from their thoughts, words and actions

For those things reveal much about who they are.

But still

“It saddens me that the choice to cut 3 million people off of SNAP will leave many of them without food security, and leave children hungry”

Is much better (I think) than “He who shall not be named is a heartless, brutal, greedy asshole!”

We cannot become that which we assail

Or we still lose

We must, as we think about, and talk about, those wrapped up in the cloud

of division and deceit, continue to seek understanding and have compassion and patience

It may be frustrating, that people we care about believe what we understand to be misinformation.  Or that they have grabbed hold of and bought into priorities that are, from the perspective of our values system, questionable.

But much goes into our perceptions.  The lenses we look through, of culture, ideology, gender, life experience, religion, economic status, educational experiences, family imprinting, and the like, radically effect what we notice, and how we interpret what we see.

I seems important to ask questions, before one gets polemic.  Why do you feel that way about that issues?  What has shaped your thinking?  How do you see the issues.  I will admit I don’t always take the time to do this.  Because to me, it is so clear.

We must take the time to seek to understand

If we are going to be angry, perhaps it is best if we are angry for others, not angry on account of how something affects us. 

In the current mess, my anger is not because any of what is happening affects me

(at least in the near future, the environmental stuff will impact us all, eventually)

It is because it impacts those who are most vulnerable.  The poor, the immigrant, the aged, the ill, the person who happens to be a member of a minority population.

Some people are truly victims of a system designed to victimize them

Their voices are muted if not completed silenced by many factors

They have little opportunity to advocate for themselves

Someone has to advocate.

It is much better to be speaking out because one sees others being treated unfairly, than to speak out of one’s own resentment.

So

Try to advocate, in a way that is not abusive or demeaning

It is not a comprehensive list

But for me, this helps me begin to wrap my head around my

Huge concerns over what is happening in this country and in this world

And it helps me to put some boundaries around what is

Admittedly, anger

Will I always be appropriate?  No!

Will I always seek to understand first?  Sadly, No

Will I always express anger over what is happening to the vulnerable, rather than what is happening to me?  I hope so.

For the times my words are just “too much”

Mea culpa

For the times I have not spoken up when I should have,

Mea culpa

For the times I am wrong (always a possibility)

Mea maxima culpa

Lets carry one dear ones

The truth is out there

and the kingdom is near, as near as our next kind act

radical acceptance

“No one is useless in this world who lightens the burdens of another.”

                      Charles Dickens

“There is no exercise better for the heart than reaching down and lifting people up.”

                      John Holmes

“When we give cheerfully and accept gratefully, everyone is blessed.”

                      Maya Angelou

“You have not lived today until you have done something for someone who can never repay you.”

                      John Bunyan

________________________________

Many wise people have figured it out

Jesus himself made it clear (Ephesians 4)

“Do not let any unwholesome talk come out of your mouths, but only what is helpful for building others up according to their needs, that it may benefit those who listen. And do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God, with whom you were sealed for the day of redemption. Get rid of all bitterness, rage and anger, brawling and slander, along with every form of malice. Be kind and compassionate to one another, forgiving each other, just as in Christ God forgave you.”

Or as Ram Dass put it, “we are all just walking each other home…”

Unless we aren’t

The sad thing is, that at this moment in history

Far too many are tearing others down, rather than lifting them up

Its endemic

And devastating

Destructive

Painful

We see it every morning in tweets from the White House

It is found in way too many comment section on the Internet

The erosion of other

Is not just a matter of words

It is also a matter of behavior

It happens when people are excluded from a church

When graffiti is sprayed on their house

When their car is vandalized because it wear liberal stickers

It happens when a cross is burned

When a poster is held saying “God hates you”

Hate floats through the air like dust on a hot summer day

It chokes us

And the only antidote, is for us to become people

Who, awake to the presence of the Sacred

Awake to the presence of love

Build other’s up

It is not that hard

I remember a time, when, following in the footsteps of my father

(who really was, mostly, a saint)

I spent my time “improving” my son by pointing out those things I thought

He could do better.

After one ski race, when he had done very well

Ski instructor dad (I really was a level 3 instructor) was ready to correct the errors

And then it hit me

He doesn’t need criticism, he needs praise

And so instead of being a critic

I became his “greatest fan”

I never regretted that move

What would it be like, if those who follow (or say they follow) Jesus

Were to become the greatest fans of other people

Especially the people who have few fans

Those who are diminished, and shamed, by our society

What if, instead of criticizing, distancing, excluding and judging,

 we praised, accepted, included, and loved

It seems to me as if that is exactly how Jesus worked

(Except with the super spiritual, the spiritually smug)

So lets do this

Starting tomorrow

Starting today!

Right now,

This moment

Say something nice

Offer some prayer

Share your affection

Lift someone up

There is no exercise better

Inside Out

“There is an inmost center in us all, where truth abides in fullness;....and, to know, rather consists in opening out a way where the imprisoned splendor may escape, then in effecting entry for a light supposed to be without.”

― Robert Browning

______________________________________________________________________

I have always suspected

that my soul has a slow leak

for I have struggled, for as long as I can remember

feeling a profound degree of hollowness

as if somehow I was emptied out

a cracked vessel

dry

there is a certain desperation that comes

from being in such a place

it is not that I have not believed in my giftedness

for gifts I have

it is merely a sense that everything

respect

success

value

love

everything

is slipping away

vanishing

leaving me gasping for respect, and value, and love

and so most of my life

has been spent, trying to fill my soul

with achievement, knowledge, affection

and I have done wonderful things

and I have done horrible things

seeking to fill that void

I have sought relief through work

and relationships

through activity and creativity

I have abused myself

and tried to use others (how does one apologize to all those one has hurt in the process?)

seeking to fill the inner cup

and still the emptiness has returned

now I sit on the edge of forever

watching the sun rise

and the glint of the golden sun on mountain snow

one who is no longer young

knowing this one thing

(I have been a slow learner)

that one can only fill the cup

from the inside....

Grace or Merit

May I live this day

Compassionate of heart,

Clear in word,

Gracious in awareness,

Courageous in thought,

Generous in love.

                     JOHN O'DONOHUE

____________________________________

Tonight I cooked hamburgers

A lot of hamburgers

As the chaos of a rodeo swirled around me

Cowboy hats everywhere

A lot of extra long boot cut jeans (on the guys)

And really tight jeans (one the women)

And big hair

And, as the rodeo opened

Kind of a hyperventilated patriotism

A “love it or leave it”

“These colors don’t run”

Kind of patriotism

Offended patriotism

Resentful about affronts real and imagined

Hints about a liberal agenda that has dishonored the flag

And the ability to true patriots to flourish

(the slights were imagined and exaggerated, but I suspect few cared)

It was unabashed

Intense

Aggressive

And yes, arrogant

And I thought about a mind set

That must go to that place of rabid and blind loyalty

To that place where no criticism is allow

No self reflection

Where is it all

Exceptionalism

And then I thought of my faith

And the teachings of the one I followed

And the call to be

Compassionate

Honest

Aware

Self-critical

Generous

Inclusive

And I thought about how

In America

Jesus has been wrapped in a flag

And his teachings ignored

In the cause of political and economic expediency

How the counter culture faith of Jesus

Has become the faith of the status quo

How the faith of humility

Has be come the faith of arrogance

About how the faith of service has become

The faith of power and coercion

About how the faith of inclusion

Has become the faith of exclusion

And the faith of grace

Has become the faith of merit

And the faith of love,

The faith of hate

I listened to he deep voiced, ultra masculine

Rodeo announcer pontificate

And I wanted to shout out about injustice

And the shaming of the poor

About our treatment of immigrants

And our abandonment of the poor

But I didn’t

I just turned hamburgers

And felt very, very sad

When [Jesus] had finished washing [the disciples] feet, he put on his clothes and returned to his place. “Do you understand what I have done for you?” he asked them. “You call me ‘Teacher’ and ‘Lord,’ and rightly so, for that is what I am. Now that I, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also should wash one another’s feet.  I have set you an example that you should do as I have done for you.”  John 13

just cruel

“People speak sometimes about the "bestial" cruelty of man, but that is terribly unjust and offensive to beasts, no animal could ever be so cruel as a man, so artfully, so artistically cruel.”

― Fyodor Dostoyevsky

_____________________________________________________

I have been thinking a lot lately about cruelty

The cruelty of children separated from their parents

The cruelty of people in cages

The cruelty of SNAP benefits pulled from struggling families

The cruelty of the death penalty

The cruelty of people excluded and abused because they were born LGBTQI

The cruelty of people of color being treated violently and unjustly by police

The cruelty of ICE

Some people are just cruel

They are bullies

And they delight in abusing power

Because it is all about them. All about their wealth, their power, their ego

The other person doesn’t count.  They are nothing but an object to be used an manipulated, and even hurt, for the benefit of the abuser

They need to be cruel, for that is how they feel power

That is how their egos are stroked

They appear to have no other way of finding a sense of value

Seneca once said “all cruelty springs from weakness”

That is true

Cruel people like to act strong

Feel strong

Be seen as strong

But they are not

Their cruelty reveals their poverty of mind and soul

It is disturbing to see cruelty emerge as the modus operandi

Of our nation

Disturbing to see cruelty sitting in the seats of power

But it is even more disturbing to see so many people

Feeding off of this cruelty.

Finding delight in it

Cheering it

Finding their own sense of power through the cruelty of those they have chosen to adore

And doing so, in many cases, while evoking the name of God

Which is puzzling

Philip Pullman once made the following statement:

“…. there may well be a God somewhere, hiding away. Actually, if he is keeping out of sight, it's because he's ashamed of his followers and all the cruelty and ignorance they're responsible for promoting in his name. If I were him, I'd want nothing to do with them.”

I believe that cruelty violates the Sacred

I believe you cannot claim to “follow Jesus”, and follow the way of cruelty

It is as simple as that

Who are we going to belong to?

Which path are we going to follow?

That is the choice that confronts us this day

“But if serving the Lord seems undesirable to you, then choose for yourselves this day whom you will serve, ….  But as for me and my household, we will serve the Lord.” Joshua 24:15

Mostly, I am sad

God,

Keep my anger from becoming meanness.

Keep my sorrow from collapsing into self-pity.

Keep my heart soft enough to keep breaking. Keep my anger turned towards justice, not cruelty.

Remind me that all of this, every bit of it, is for love.

Keep me fiercely kind.

Amen.

                               Laura Jean Truman,  Twitter, October 2018

__________________________________________________________________

It is another day in America

A polarized America

Spin, purposefully, into chaos and hate

It is an America in which

For most of us

Anger lies just below the surface

Our anger comes from different places

It is fueled by ideology

By fear

By resentment

By injustice, real or perceived

And it is fueled in many ways

By people purposefully manipulating us

But what we see, and hear, and read

But it is there

It is also an America in which there is deep, profound sadness

We all have our own reasons for that sadness

Children in captivity

Poor people neglected

Rich people entitled

The prevalent hate

The greed, and the apathy

The bullying from on high

The abandonment of the way of Jesus, by those who claim to follow him

But embrace and support everything Jesus spoke against

I am angry (at times)

Mostly, I am sad

And so I pray

That the God in me will stir

Or perhaps, that I will awake to that presence

And be so permeated by love

That even though

There is anger and sadness

I can allow my self

To remain open, and empathic

And walk through each day

Building up, and not tearing down

So that I may approach each person I meet

With fierce kindness

A bad week for the God of Love

“The God of Love had a really bad week”

                               Diana Butler Bass

___________________________________________

The God of love had a very bad week

It was a week where more legal immigrants we detained at the border

Mostly because the color of their skin made them a perfect target

For a racist leader.

It was a week when children remained in cages

Their fragile selves being destroy day by day by the cruelty imposed on them

By people claiming that God blesses their country

It was a week when gun control continued to be blocked

It was a week when hatred flourished to the shout of

“send her back”

A week when so called “patriots” tried to stir up both hate and

Fear, in front of my county’s courthouse

A week in which a person who dared to challenge them

Woke up to a broken car window and a vandalized care

It was a week when vitrol flooded the comments sections

On Facebook and News articles

It was a week when the Evangelical church, claiming to follow Jesus

Doubled down on its support of a cheat and liar

And worse

It was a week when an evangelical pastor

Suggested that if Trump loses the election

Christian leaders and politicians will all get murdered

(this same “pastor” suggested that the children and grandchildren of all who oppose Trump will be cursed)

Yep,

The God of love had a bad week

Meanwhile, the God many Americans have created in place of this God

That tougher, stricter

Emperor God

Who is all punishment, wrath and exclusion

That God who plays favorites

And is all about power and wealth

And winning

This militaristic, angry

Cruel God…

Did so well

This God (or so we are led to believe)

Rode along with ICE as they rounded up good people

Smiled benevolently at the angry, chanting crowds

Blessed a country that has created economic inequity

Made race based injustice the norm

And neglected the vulnerable

This God sided with winners

This God flat out squashed the God of Love….

Or not

The truth is

And this is something

“a minority of white Christians know,

and the majority of Christians of color never need be reminded,

the God of love is always hanging around,

the brown-skinned Jewish rabbi preaching about the poor being blessed

and the broken-hearted comforted.

Love your neighbor as yourself.

Do unto others. Let the little children come.

Faith, hope, and love.

And the greatest of these is love.”  (Diana Butler Bass)

It was a bad week for the God of Love

But it is (symbolically)

Friday

And Sunday is coming

And on Sunday, Love wins

journey inward

If you want to find God, then honor God within you, and you will always see God beyond you. For it is only God in you who knows where and how to look for God.

When you honor and accept the divine image within yourself, you cannot help but see it in everybody else, too, and you know it is just as undeserved and unmerited as it is in you. I call this the “Principle of Likeness.” From this frame you stop judging and start loving unconditionally, without asking whether someone is worthy or not. The breakthrough occurs at once, although the realization deepens and takes on greater conviction over time.

                                                                        Richard Rohr

____________________________________________

Spirituality requires two journeys

First a journey inward

And then a journey outward

The journey inward is that profound effort we must make

Not to the center of the earth

But to the center of our selves

That journey into the depths

To that place that defines us, and makes us who we are

Our core

Our soul

The place where the Sacred dwells

And is at home

We must go to that place

And find that Sacred Presence

And we must become intimate with it

There really is no other word

Intimacy

Intimacy implies closeness, connection

It implies “knowing”, “being awake” to the other

It implies passion, and uniting

The moment we become intimate with the Sacred

When we have become connected to the divine within us

Something happens

What happens is that we discover the divine image

We discover who we truly are

We become, ironically, intimate with ourselves

With the Divine Child

And loving the Sacred within

And loving ourselves

We are then ready for the journey outward

We are then ready, to seek to connect with others

We go forth transformed

Because we are now going forth out of authenticity

We are going forth out of fullness

Not out of need

Not out of emptiness and fear,

And this transformation shows

In a profound way

In the way we interact with others

If we have made the journey inward

The journey outward produces

Generosity, kindness

Compassion, and love

If we have not made the journey inward?

If we are not intimate with the Sacred presence

If we have not discovered our Sacred heritage, the divine image?

Then our journey outward

Is made out of emptiness

And everything we do, is an attempt to fill that emptiness

To ease the fear

And what emerges is greed,

And domination

Grasping

Hate

Aggression

Worse

How we interface with others

How we treat them

Is a clear indicator of the quality of our connection with God

Jesus made that pretty clear if you think about it

“By their fruits you shall know them”

“By this all people will know you are my disciples, that you love one another”.

The journey inward

Determines the journey outward

We cannot truly love others

We cannot be God’s people in this ungodly world

We cannot resist the temptations of wealth and power

We cannot be Sacred Children

Without it

Essential Selfishness

I am done with the monster of "We," the word of serfdom, of plunder, of misery, falsehood and shame.

And now I see the face of god, and I raise this god over the earth, this god whom men have sought since men came into being, this god who will grant them joy and peace and pride.

This god, this one word:

"I.”

                                                    Ayn Rand, Anthem

_________________________________________________________

I have often wonder how humans can manage to get things so wrong

Humanity has been gifted with the planet

It is destroying it

It has been gifted with brains

But doesn’t use them, allowing demagogues to manipulate and control

It has been given the ability love

But has allowed this gift to devolve into lust

It has been given the power of creativity

And creates wonderful things

But also creates weapons of mass destruction

It has been given an intimate look at what Sacred looks like

In Jesus

It has been given clear instructions

Through Jesus

But others teachers as well

About what it looks like to live a life

Awake to the sacred

But even human religions have

Become things of horror

Used to justify war and killing

Used to justify hate and exclusion

What is wrong with the human race?

It seems to me that he problem is that we have made a god

Out of “I”

And have rejected the power of “we”

We have chosen individualism over community

Individual “winning” over the “common good”

We have chosen power, which is very much an “I” thing

And have let go of service, with is a “we” thing

It is not that it is not important to have a sense of “I”

It is not that we do not need to nurture and take care of ourselves as individuals

But we have to have a balance

Between ourselves as individuals and between ourselves as part of a greater whole

If Jesus taught us anything it was that philosophies such as that propounded by Rand

Are deadly

“what good is it” he said, “to gain the whole world and lose your soul”

Which is simply another way of saying

That when you are only about “self” you lose your self

And that when you give yourself, in the service of the “we”, you find yourself.

This basic message is woven into the fabric of the scriptures

If you ignore it

You violate the scriptures

It is that simple

That clear

And yet today, many pursue the God of I

Instead of the God of Love

And from this fundamental failure

A failure as old as the Garden of Eden

Comes all the ills of this world

It is clear that we have a choice

We can worship the god of “I”

Or we can worship the God of “we”

And that choice determines the

What legacy we leave

It is the difference between inequity, and economic injustice

It is the difference between war and peace

It is the difference between inclusion and exclusion

It is the different between fear and peace

Between a flourishing planet, and wasteland

It is the difference, between life and death

What will we choose?

Avoidance is a thing

The more you try to avoid suffering, the more you suffer, because smaller and more insignificant things begin to torture you, in proportion to your fear of being hurt. The one who does most to avoid suffering is, in the end, the one who suffers most.”

                               Thomas Merton, The Seven Storey Mountain

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Avoidance is a thing

As we try to move toward what we value

As we try to take tentative steps toward

Meaning

And love

And other people

Stuff comes up

Ugly stuff

Difficult stuff

Uncomfortable stuff

It might be fear

Or anger

It might be twisted thinking

It might be mental scripts

Those inner rules and commandments

Imposed on us by our parents

Our church

Our party

Our life experiences

I am not enough

I can’t do that

Winning is everything

If am not rich and powerful I am nothing

If I try I will fail

No matter what I do it is not enough

I am not valued

I am not loved

I am not respected

People only value me for what I can do

They don’t really care about me

Chatter, chatter, chatter,

The Bully Brain

Pain comes up

Depression comes up

Anxiety comes up

And when we get uncomfortable?

We go into avoidance mode

We isolate

We drink

We smoke weed

We work our asses off (to prove we are OK, and when you are working too hard you don’t have to deal with your stuff)

We get angry

We hate

We jump on the band wagon of the latest fad

We immerse ourselves in Facebook

You know the drill

And it works!

Sometimes

For a while

And sometimes it doesn’t work

And we feel worse

And we avoid more

And we end up stuck

What we don’t do, is move toward whom we want to be

What we don’t do is move toward those we love

What we don’t do is connect with the Sacred

And let the Sacred empower us

Right now there is a whole lot of avoiding going on

Perhaps it is time to stop avoiding

Perhaps it is time to look in the mirror and really see

What is going on in our heads

Perhaps it is time to take a deep breath

And awaken

To ourselves

And to God

To accept all that we see in that mirror

To accept all the noise in our heads

Not accept it as good

But accept it as present

Accept it as “stuff that comes up” and runs our lives

Accept it

And let it go

And then let God take over

And move us forward

Not in hate and fear

Not with the monkey brain chatter

But in hope, and joy

In peace and love

So that we can do what we want to do

Love the one’s we are with

And become who we were created to be

Sacred Children

The job, is love

“Our job is to love others without stopping to inquire whether or not they are worthy. That is not our business and, in fact, it is nobody's business. What we are asked to do is to love, and this love itself will render both ourselves and our neighbors worthy.”

                                                                        Thomas Merton

____________________________________________________________________

We only have on job

To love others

Not just to love others

But to love others without asking whether or not they are worthy

The Bible calls this agape

With agape we don’t love someone because they deserve it

With agape we don’t demand value

We create value

Once when I was younger

And my daughter a little child

There was a doll named Heidi

A gift from a much admired cousin

Named Heidi

Heidi had no value

She was a stuffed triangle with felt feel and hands

Glued directly to the body

Yarn for hair

And a painted face

She played “thank heavens for little girls”

One day, as we were 30 minutes

Into a 9 hour drive to grandmother’s house

My daughter suddenly exclaimed

“where’s Heidi”

Where indeed!?

Nowhere

And so, even though we had a long drive ahead

We turned back

To get Heidi

That doll of no value

I would not have returned for my wallet

But …..

That doll of no value

Had immense value

Because it was loved

That is agape

And that is what we are called to have

Agape love

We are called to have that love for the dirty and frightened

Families at the border

For the children in cages

We are called to have that kind of love for the homeless person

Asleep on a grate

And for the addicted person

Who has wet himself once again

We are called to have that kind of love for poor people

Rich people

White people

Colored people

Ill people

Old people

Young people

All people

We don’t love them because they have value

From a worldy perspective

We love them and give them value through that love

They become precious

And I suspect, so do we

One cannot love in that way

Without being changed

We are transformed by our caring

Our giving

Our kindnesses

Each of us will find this love a challenge in our own way

I have no trouble loving immigrants

I have no trouble with people who have mental illness

Or who are old (duh)

I have no trouble with the poor

Or the addicted

But I have people it is hard to love

I have trouble with Trump

Those who embrace racism

But I suspect when Jesus says

“love your neighbor”

(with agape love)

He means them too

And so I cannot be arrogant

Or smug

I cannot judge

I can only seek to be loved by agape love

Filled with agape love

And give agape love

It is a complicated thing indeed

There are boundaries in there

And even Jesus had his moments when he said

Essentially

“People wake up!!!!!”

“Enough!!!”

Loving doesn’t not mean challenging lies

Resisting evil

But it does mean

Seeking not destruction

But restoration

And reconciliation

I know!  Right?

But still, there it is

Agape is not for the faint of heart

So this day, I pray for love

I pray for transforming love

I prayer for enough love to embrace the world

And I pray

That even in the most tattered of hearts

The most empty of souls

And I prayer that even in my dark and angry places

Love can be born