Like the crazy beauty and unbelievable resilience of human beings,
The resurrection of the sun each morning,
How even those we oppose- those with "positions" different than our own- love their children.
Oh, I'm not hoping or wishing for endless harmony. I never really was a Kum ba ya girl.
But, I try not to protect my heart by pretending the children who are dying in the war in Syria, and schools in America, and the young indigenous man shot on a farm here in Canada are not all "our" children.
And what would we not do to protect our children?
There are times to stand up and shout, and times to be quiet and listen deeply. Of course I've sometimes gotten that wrong- had something to say when I needed to listen; hesitated to speak up when something needed to be said, or shouted, or sung by a solitary voice or in unison by thousands.
At night as I drift into sleep something touches me- a larger Presence, the Beloved, the God whose Love I have known since always- and I know that in some way, deep at the core of Life, everything is and will be okay.
Knowing this, I can see without fear that here and now, in this shared world, there are things that are not okay, things that sacrifice children, things that we must change.
Decades of experience has eroded my certainty that I have the solutions, but deepened my conviction that we can find a way forward together. ~Oriah
Gratitude to Karen Davis at Open Door Dreaming for this image of the early morning light, illuminating the darkness.
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I hope you're right. I find myself feeling pretty hopeless when I see what's being exposed all around me. It's not that it hasn't always been true. It's more that it's now being exposed and it isn't very pretty. I would like to have your certainty about how we can work together on the way forward.
ReplyDeleteCarol, I hear you. And honestly I don't know all of the "how" only that the only way to move forward is together. It took me a week to post anything after the shooting because (truly for the first time) hopelessness had me by the throat- but slowly, by listening to the students and the parents and the communities fighting for sanity, the dark certainty that nothing would/could be done has receded. We have to take turns encouraging each other- and you take your turn beautifully and often. O
DeleteThank you Oriah, I often come here to find some words to help me start my day. And not in vain.
ReplyDeleteI do feel though that, like Thick Nhat Han has said in his poem 'call me by my true names', also the perpetrators are our children. And I hope my heart will learn to stretch to love them as well...