Why I am here

More than ever before in our history, we need a new kind of personal and social fuel. Not fear, but love. Not prejudice, but openness. Not supremacy, but service. Not inferiority, but equality. Not resentment, but reconciliation. Not isolation, but connection. Not the spirit of hostility, but the holy Spirit of hospitality.

 

So the “most excellent way,” Paul said, is the way of love [1 Corinthians 13:13]. Old markers of gender, religion, culture, and class must recede: “There is neither Jew nor Gentile, slave nor free, male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus” [Galatians 3:28] . . . [and] “the only thing that counts is faith working through love” [Galatians 5:6]. Where the Spirit is, love is. Where the Spirit teaches, people learn love.

 

                     Brian D. McLaren, We Make the Road by Walking

                     Quoted by Richard Rohr, Daily Meditations, 7/8/2021

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I come from God

at least I come from something I cannot really describe

or encompass

something greater than myself

that I can only know but not understand

 

I come from a power that stand under, over and around

all that is

 

at eventually I will return to that reality from whence I came

at some point whoever brought me here will have to take me home (Rumi)

 

but for now

I stumble through each day

vaguely aware (at times)

acutely aware (at other times)

 

of my original blessing

of the fact that I am meant to be the “image”

of that force that is somehow behind my being

here

 

aware too of how blurred that image can be

 

I have read (somewhere) that the more connected I am

to the root of my root

the more the image emerges

 

sometimes its is almost as if I am a new creation

born again

by Love to be…

 

to be what?

 

ah, that is indeed the question

to be powerful, rich, in control, safe?

 

an awkward idea to have at the foot of the cross!

 

it appears as if the path I am called to trod

takes me not into places of power

but into places of service and vulnerability

even sacrifice

 

I am called to love

I am called, as one who came from Love and will return to Love

to live a life of generosity and kindness

a life of forgiveness and reconciliation

 

I am called to welcome, and embrace

not just the friend, but the stranger

especially the stranger

 

I am called as one who came from Love and will return to Love

to live a life of love

 

that is why

I am

here