Breaking the Pattern

Christians indeed have a strange image of God; a naked bleeding man dying on a cross…  What question is God trying to answer by giving us a crucified man for a God? What human problem is God trying to reveal and from what is God trying to save us on the cross?

                               Richard Rohr (the wisdom pattern  pp. 38,39

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where is the Sacred in these times

 

as faceless armored men assail a “wall of mothers”

as dark figures break windows and set fires

as a virus rages

and people rage in return, refusing to save themselves and their neighbors

by the simple wearing of a mask?

 

Where is Sacred?

whose side is God on?

 

there is so much struggle

so much hatred

so much suffering

 

as we strive, strive, strive

to find our way out of this travail

as we fight for a win

 

in the striving everyone claims God

everyone

right and left

or at least everyone claims to be in the right (for not all believe in a God)

 

we all find refuge in a perverse sort of certitude that insists

I am right, and he/she is wrong

We are right, they are wrong

and truth, and justice, and yes, God, must be on “our side”

 

and where does this take us?

 

It circles us right back into the primordial swamp

of struggle, and hate, and suffering

 

our solutions to the hurts, and betrayal

the injustices and inequities

 

our response to the people who have rejected us

or oppressed us

or even abused us

often drive us to become a mirror image of that we resist

 

we double down on our need to be superior, right, and in control

 

and so transformation never happens

change never comes

revolutions come and go and in the end

nothing is different

 

we have merely “rearranged the furniture on the Titanic”

 

a but then there is the cross

where something else is modeled

 

where hatred is received but not returned

where suffering is accepted, but not passed on

where all the sins of the world are absorbed

and held

and, dare we say it, killed

 

the newness might rise up

 

the cross is about breaking the old, endless pattern

 

where is God, Sacred, Jesus, Love, “the good”

in these times?

 

On the cross

 

Hanging there

taking it all in, all the sin and hate and anger

fighting hate without becoming hate

fighting violence without using violence

breathing forgiveness

 

saying in no uncertain terms

 

“this stops here”