On desire!

Now there is nothing wrong with desire.  The question is, whose desires are you imitating?  To be alive is to imitate God’s generous desires… to create, to bless, to help, to serve, to care for, to save, to enjoy.  To make the opposite choice—to imitated one another’s desires and become one another’s rivals – is to choose the path of death

                     Brian McLaren (We Make the Road by Walking)

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In that infamous story of the garden,

where Adam and Eve allegorically wandered free,

even there a choice was offered.

 

Choose this day the tree of life, or choose the tree of death.

Choose the way of love and joy, or choose the way of rivalry, the way of judgement.

 

We know the choice that was made.

We know the result.

We live the result.

 

Each day we too get to choose.

We get to choose the way of true freedom, which is the way of love and acceptance, which is a matter of walking each other home,

Or we get to choose the way of competition, which is a matter of scratching out rewards from a dry and brittle earth.

 

Our choice does not have the cleanliness of the allegory.

There is no tree, no forbidden fruit.

Instead, there are advertisements, and cultural expectations, and influencers, and pundits and politicians.

 

Eat this!

Drink that!

Believe this!

Follow that!

 

And we are being asked to choose between the fruit of power and wealth, or the wondrous feast of community and compassion.

 

The choice matters.

 

If we choose competition, and the path of winning, if we choose the way of accumulation of money, we are changed.

 

We are drawn away from our original blessing, from the mutual enjoyment of Sacred bounty, into a world of strife and striving.

 

We begin to see others as competitors, not as brothers and sisters.

We become people who will do anything to win.

We hug things to ourselves, and become fearful hoarders.

 

We become “graspers, hiders, blamers, and shamers.” (McLaren)

 

We become people who willingly suppress, oppress and even destroy others, and in doing so, we destroy ourselves.

 

At least we erode and shrink our souls.

 

We will never be without desire.

It appears that very human trait was hardwired in.

 

But desire is not evil.

It just depends what we desire.

 

This day my desire is to mirror Love

And to do justly,

and to love mercy,

and to walk humbly with Love (Micah 6:8)