Love and hate

“The opposite of love is not hate, it's indifference. The opposite of art is not ugliness, it's indifference. The opposite of faith is not heresy, it's indifference. And the opposite of life is not death, it's indifference.”

                                                           Elie Wiesel

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God help me, I cannot be indifferent

When I see hate

And fear

When I hear lies touted as truth

When I hear a candidate talk about “grabbing pussy”

When I see women minimized

And the poor oppressed and shame

And guns worship

And power deified

And greed praised

And exclusion presented as “God’s idea”

I cannot be indifferent

I will say what I think

And what I believe

I might be wrong

I know that

But I will always fight what I believe to be right

And I will always fight

For the

Jesus

Way

Peace my friends

We are better than this

In terms of spiritual practice, “taking in the good” highlights key states of mind

Such as kindness and inner peace,

So you can find your way back to them again

                                                          Richard Hason, Buddha’s Brain, p. 76

I am larger, better than I thought,

I did not know I held so much goodness

                                                          Walt Whitman, “Song of the Open Road”

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It was a dark and stormy day

The rain bowed my head

And the wind bent my body

Inwardly I cursed

And I let the darkness assail my soul

And then for a moment

The sun broke through

And shown through leaves

Kissed with Sacred love

Glowing in radiant wetness

Purple and green

Orange and yellow

The shades of hope

And in that moment

I took in the good

And found a place to rest

And breathe

And believe

A refuge

A homeland

Of the soul

Star gazing

“We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.”

                                           Oscar Wilde, Lady Windermere's Fan

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We all find ourselves in the gutter

From time to time

Life happens

We make bad choices

Other people make bad choices

We confront

Greed, fear, hate and lust

Our own and others

And then suddenly there we are

In the gutter

Surrounded by garbage

Covered with effluvium of our lives

We can lie hopeless

Staring at the mud

Or we can turn over, and look at the stars

We can find the bright bits of hope and love

That linger in the darkness

And with them

Drawing us one

Pick ourselves up

And continue on

One step at a time