the price of love

“The pain of grief is just as much part of life as the joy of love: it is perhaps the price we pay for love, the cost of commitment. To ignore this fact, or to pretend that it is not so, is to put on emotional blinkers which leave us unprepared for the losses that will inevitably occur in our own lives and unprepared to bereavement little help others cope with losses in theirs.

                                                   Colin Murray Parkes

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It seems as if every day my heart breaks

This is the price I pay for love

Not romantic love

But that deep earthy love

that comes from the Sacred

for all things Sacred

and everything is Sacred

the earth is sacred

the mountains, and streams, and oceans

all of it

the sky is sacred

as it flashes neon orange in the morning

and stretches blue during the day

only to die flaming

Animals too

All creatures great and small

Are fashioned by divine design

And humans

Ah yes

Those beings created in the image

Carriers of divine love

Those in whom the sacred dwells

Those who have so badly blurred the divine image

And my heart breaks

As I watch people who seem

Somehow

To have lost their hearts

(and their minds too)

Do things that so assail

Everything good, and bright, and beautiful

And sacred

It hurts my heart to see

The comfortable, the powerful, the rich

The hard, the cruel, the empty, the angry,

Make decisions that hurt the planet

And hurt people

It hurts my heart to see justice perverted

To see equity vanish

To see the rule of law ignored

To see our freedoms destroyed

It hurts my heart to hear our leaders lie

To see people who are supposed to provide justice subvert justice

To see the rich enriched

And the poor abandoned

Each day it gets worse

Each day evil grows bolder

I watch it all

and I grieve

I grieve for the LGBTQI person who has lost rights

For the woman who has been minimized, or worse, assaulted, and abused

I grieve for the homeless, the hungry, the poverty stricken

I grieve for the immigrant who fears each day the arrival of ICE

(and you don’t have to be illegal to have that fear)

I grieve for the refugee who comes to our borders and is put in a camp

Whose child is taken away

I grieve the daily assault on truth

On kindness

On integrity

On compassion

On justice

On morality

Sometimes I wonder, do they know what they are doing?

These “People of the Lie” (Scott Peck)

Are these conscious intentional acts of evil, of injustice, greed, and immorality,

or have these people truly become deluded, incapable of seeing, speaking and doing truth?

Do they simply not see the damage they are doing,

or do they see, and just not care?

Are they simply so shortsighted that they cannot see

beyond the next election?

What goes through the mind of a person who participates

in a farce, in a coverup?

What goes on in the mind of a person who allows a small, retributive person

destroy the earth?

What goes on in the heart of a person who can casually watch children be caged?

I have come to the conclusion that it does not matter

I must grieve for them too

And I must grieve for those who have been led into the darkness

I know they do not understand

They have chosen to believe people of the lie

They are wrapped in lies

Fed a steady diet of false information,

and thus are consumed by hate and fear

Those who cheer brutality and retribution

and cheer their own destruction?

I grieve for them too

I do not know what to do with this grief

Any more than Jesus knew what to do with his grief

As he approached Jerusalem

All he could do is weep

Weep that they would not and could not see

(If you, even you, had only known on this day what would bring you peace—but now it is hidden from your eyes)

Weep at the horror that was to come

But he wept for everyone

Without distinction

Because that is how the heart of God works

I want to be angry

I want to hate

But instead I am called to grieve

As I believe God grieves

It is the price of love