life or death

We have a life impulse and a death impulse.  Each choice allows us to move toward the things which bring us life.  We if don’t choose the path of growth, we can move toward that which drains us.

 

Our life impulse calls us into community with ourselves, with others with the divine... Our death impulse pulls us to retreat from the world and separate ourselves from others through dividing ideas… We withdraw into our woundedness and make choices from that place.

          Christine Valters Paintner

___________________________________

 

We are called to choose this day

Who we will serve.

We are called to choose this day

Which path we will walk.

We are called to choose this day either life or death.       

 

We are people called into community.

There is One who dwells in each of us, binding us together with threads of love,

and those bonds of love demand community.

 

When we choose community we choose life.

We choose growth.

We choose love.

 

We best experience growth and growth, when we are in community.

Ask any member of AA!

There is something about being part of “a people.”

 

When we are part of a people we walk together,

hurt together,

rejoice together

grieve together,

work together.

 

And it as we are together that we learn who we are alone.

The group calls out our BS.

It tears down our defenses and shatters our illusions.

 

The group supplies answers, and help,

and (if it is healthy) unconditional love.

And in the group we heal, finding forgiveness, and reconciliation.

 

We are staggering through a pandemic.

And what we are learning is that too many of us have chosen to forsake community.

We are divided by ideas.

We have splintered into toxic tribes that war with one another.

 

Some believe their tribe is a community!

But tribes can never be the Sacred Community.

For that community, that one created by Love includes all.

 

We have chosen to allow our ideology to separate us,

and have withdrawn into dark places, our wounds festering,

our resentment nurtured.

 

We stand encapsulated,

refusing to work for the common good,

protective, obstinate, recalcitrant,

willing to watch others get sick and die

for our rights,

 

abandoning “the other”

denying community

making choices that take us down the path of estrangement and death.

 

Oh God that is love, remind us that we are part of a whole,

part of a Beloved Community,

where we are called to do things large and small

for each other.

 

Stop our bewildering race down the path of death

Clear our hearts, and clear our brains

of all that isolates and divides.

 

Help us to keep our eyes stayed on You, that we might once again

be a people

 

who hurt together,

rejoice together

grieve together,

work together,

and walk together down the path of life.