I am bleeding hope

May you be blessed with a wise and compassionate guide

Who can accompany you through the fear and grief

Until your heart has wept its way to your true self.

 

As your tears fall over that wounded place,

May they wash away your hurt and free your heart.

May your forgiveness still the hunger of the wound

 

So that for the first time you can walk away from that place,

Reunited with your banished heart, now healed and freed,

And feel the clear, free air bless your new face.”

                     John O'Donohue, To Bless the Space Between Us: A Book of Blessings

________________________________

 

I am bleeding

My heart is torn, my soul is shredded

And I am bleeding

 

Love

and hope

 

but worse, I am bleeding anger and perhaps

dare I say it

even hate

 

this “blood” pours from wounds created by lies

created by betrayal

and intransigence

 

and it drains me

 

I do not know what to do with these wounds

with this pain

 

wise voices whisper forgive

love

“overcome evil with good

 

I hear the words of Jesus echo from the brutality of the cross

“forgive them’

 

But the abusers still abuse

and those who have so grievously wounded

a planet

a nation

a woman, a man

a child

 

want me to forgive and forget

to smile and pretend

it never happened

 

or it wasn’t that bad

 

what do I do with this lack of repentance?

with the lack of regret,

with the behaviors that simply

continue,

and continue,

and continue?

 

what do I do with those who continue to harm,

to oppress,

to abuse?

 

I long to forgive

My heart’s desire is unity

I yearn for reconciliation

 

as one reconciled to Sacred

and (at least somewhat) reconciled to myself

I have been given “the ministry of reconciliation”

 

But can reconciliation happen,

can we find our way back together,

with just forgiveness?

 

Or can forgiveness become license?

Can it become enabling?

Can forgiveness and accountability go together?

 

Is forgiveness without accountability

Really forgiveness?

 

I believe we live in a time of hate when we are called to love

But perhaps we also live in a time of injustice when we are called to demand justice

 

If we demand justice but do not love we are, perhaps, cruel

But if we seek to love but do not demand justice, we are enablers of injustice

 

this is the dilemma

how do we fight for justice with love

when there are those who take love for weakness?

who will continue to do what they do, and go further and further

who will continue to wound, and even kill

until (literally) stopped?!

 

Love empowers forgiveness

It also empowers justice

 

for me in my humanness

how do I, like Jesus, bring the two together

to create reconciliation?

 

Ah Sacred!

This is beyond me

 

may You be

“a wise and compassionate guide

Who can accompany [me] through the fear and grief’

 

May You teach me the way

to overcome evil with good

 

But Lord

the abuse

(political, social, sexual, physical, psychological, spiritual)

has to stop