I Wish

I wish I loved the Human Race;

I wish I loved its silly face;

I wish I liked the way it walks;

I wish I liked the way it talks;

And when I'm introduced to one

I wish I thought What Jolly Fun!

Walter Raleigh (professor)

Wishes of an Elderly Gentleman, Wished at a Garden Party

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I don’t know how God does it.

If calling that reality in which we live, and breathe and have our being

is best labeled “God”.

 

There are problems with giving the Sacred arms, and legs,

hands and feet

and all that human qualities that so plague us.

 

It makes it harder to understand just how BIG this power is.

It makes it impossible to understand just how BIG this love is.

 

But we cannot understand this essence any other way.

So we make God a father, a mother

for we understand the love of a father or a mother for his or her child

 

we understand how they can see beauty, and promise, when at times

no one else can.

 

God is always incarnating

Trying to help us understand

God is in the mountain majestic!

“Hey” God says, “this is me”

“I’m in the valley too, and in the trees, and the flowers, I am in it ALL”

 

God incarnated in Jesus.

God incarnates in us.

 

But this is why it is so hard to understand how God does it

How “God” can love unconditionally

How God can love so thoroughly

 

For by our attempts to define God we limit God

We make finite what is infinite

We make God something we can grasp and make ours.

 

And so there God is, nodding over humanity

or perhaps shaking a holy head, wondering how we can be such fools

 

Wondering how we do not get the idea that

We cannot love ourselves without loving others

How it is that we do not understand that freedom is not freedom if it does not include

(and protect) everyone.

 

The only way it makes sense to this feeble mind

is to understand God as un-anthropomorphically as possible

to think of the Sacred as pure Love

pure power

pure presence

 

Something that simple is, in everything

not inactively

but as the driving force that brings into being

and maintains being

a force, woven into our fabric that influences

 

A love which is more powerful and more influential

the more awake we are to its presence

 

A love which can be nothing other than love

And which is present as love

even in those who put others at risk in the name of freedom

even in those who listen to lies

even in those who hate

even in those who want to dominate and control

even in me