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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



Monday, August 19, 2019

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
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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

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