nurture the good

There is more good than evil in the world – but not by much

Rabbi Zalman Schachter-Shalomi

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Sometimes our propensity for evil surprises us

We are constantly amazed at how easy it is for people to lie.

To believe lies.

To choose money over people.

To seek power at any cost (to the other).

To use and misuse.

To abuse.

To choose toxic individualism over common good.

 

How did we get here?

To this place outside the garden,

trudging in the dust with Adam and Eve,

vulnerable and afflicted?

 

It is as they say a mystery,

explained only by a story from ancient days,

a story replete with serpents and forbidden fruit, and temptations,

and capitulation.

 

There really is only one point to the story.

Once we were one with Sacred, now we are not.

At least we are not while we are here on this dark planet (CS Lewis)

where so much is wrong.

 

Many great mystics understand that is an unnatural state.

That in our “creation” we were “knit and oned to God” (Julian),

but that in our entry into this fraught world of creation, we must from this unity

to a separation of sorts.

 

Not a complete separation, for Sacred is still in us and among us

But a separation nonetheless.

 

A separation which means that we are both good and bad,

loving and hate filled,

forgiving and vengeful,

kind and cruel.

Yes!  The mystics would insist that eventually the separation resolves,

that when we die we return to Sacred and return to oneness

 

But, in this world we experience the via negativa and the via positiva,

the way both wide and narrow

 

and thus there is both good and bad

and the good outweighs the bad, but not by much.

 

And so we feel so lost and vulnerable.

We feel as if at any moment love will not win and the forces of evil

will come crashing in for a final victory.

 

Only faith.

Only our belief in Sacred, and in our oneing keeps us going.

 

And so each day we fight for awareness of our oneness with God

And so we day we seek the breakthrough (Eckhart), the moment of spiritual intoxication (Aquinas) that reminds us of our origins, and facilitates our union.

 

And so we day we take that connection, and we live it!

We seek, desperately, to live out the love which flows into us perpetually, from Love his/herself.

 

Hoping that by our actions,

our random acts of kindness

love will win, even if not by much!

 

We can make the difference.