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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, September 18, 2019

the Third Way


Jesus abhors both passivity and violence as responses to evil. His is a third alternative not even touched by these options. . . . Jesus’ Third Way bears at its very heart the love of enemies.

Love of enemies has, for our time, become the litmus test of authentic Christian faith. Commitment to justice, liberation, or the overthrow of oppression is not enough, for all too often the means used have brought in their wake new injustices and oppressions. Love of enemies is the recognition that the enemy, too, is a child of God. The enemy too believes [they are] in the right, and fears us because we represent a threat against [their] values, lifestyle, or affluence. When we demonize our enemies, calling them names and identifying them with absolute evil, we deny that they have that of God within them that makes transformation possible. Instead, we play God. We write them out of the Book of Life. We conclude that our enemy has drifted beyond the redemptive hand of God. . . .
                                                   Walter Wink via Richard Rohr
                                                   Walter Wink, Jesus and Nonviolence: A Third Way
                                                   (Augsburg Fortress: 2003), 12, 13-14, 58-59, 60-61.
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“Forget black and white” someone once said, “and try on gray”
Buddha and others simple said, “try the middle way”

Some people think the middle way is the way of passivity
They believe that in this polarized world one must choose sides

Hate or Love
Inclusion or Exclusion
Selfishness or selflessness

But what if the middle way is
Purposeful, informed, spiritual response

What if my choice is not
Child of God, child of Evil
But “person who is a child of God but hasn’t figured it out yet”

Jesus was so far into the realm of the Sacred as to be Sacred
His humanity was so permeated by his Sacred nature that the distinction between
Sacred and Common became meaningless

It seems at times as if some are so permeated with evil
So far into the realm of hate and fear, violence and abuse
As to seem evil, personified

So far into that realm that they seem to be children of sin
Or Evil
Pick your word

But Jesus reminds us
That all people are Children of God
And that no person can drift beyond the redemptive hand of God

Can someone give me a “baaaaaa?!”

Remember the one lost sheep
The prodigal
The missing coin

Child of God!
Yes, that one!
This means I cannot respond to this one
No matter how difficult it might be
With hate

With wishes for destruction
(as tempting as that might be)

But it also does not mean that I simple sit back
And fail to respond
To brutality, injustice, inequity, racism, and worse.

It means I challenge what is there that is not Godly
But it means I cherish what is there that is
Even if I cannot see it.

This might means something as simple as praying
Not for the destruction of the other
But for the restoration of the other

Either path leads to an end to the evil
Either path

Be we have a ministry of reconciliation
Not a ministry of alienation and judgement

So we pray
For metanoia, change, a turn around
We pray that hate becomes love
Fear becomes faith

We respond, not by attacking and demeaning those who do not agree with us
But by asking questions, and seeking to understand

This is the third alternative
Which bears at its heart,
The love of Jesus

Not our love
For this is beyond us
But the love of God

As Wink and Rohr remind us

“It is our very inability to love our enemies that throws us into the arms of grace.” (Wink)

“Or as I, Richard, like to say, it’s when we come to the end of our own resources that we must draw upon the Infinite Life and Love within us to do what we alone cannot do.”



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