Solidarity

You have blood running through your veins like I. You shed tears like I as well. When your hurt, it cuts you deep, just like I. Why do we insist on building walls. Should we not rather be building bridges. Democrats and republicans, gay and straight, different ethnicities and heritages, are we so different? What hurts you, hurts I. What lifts up your soul, does for mine as well. So let us seek those things that encourage, that strengthen the Divine presence in us. We were all created in it, it cannot be taken away. When I look at you, I want to see this presence, for it is your deepest identity. You were made for eternity, as was I. It is marked in the ground of your being. Your actions can speak of it, or diminish your identification with it, but the truth of what it is, and who you are, can never be drowned out. You cannot fall too far for grace to reach you. Even if we were to wage war against the Divine truth in us, it would not stop it. Picture a compassionate parent with their child. The child may tantrum and fit, but this doesn't change that the parent sees the child through a lens of love. The parent only wishes the child realizes this love, as God does for us. It doesn't mean that anything goes, but it does mean that evil cannot steal from us who we really are. When considering this, it has tremendous implications. It mean those on different continents share with me my core identity. It means when I'm warring for new soil, that I'm killing those made in the same image as me, and in a way partially killing myself. The same light shines in all of us, diminishing it one diminishes it in others as well. My first attitude towards others should be that of identification, of solidarity. I should not build walls but bridges. The suffering Christ on the cross said, Father forgive them, they know not what they do. The one being murdered offered forgiveness to those doing murdering. In the act of the cross, Christ laid down, let the world take their vengeance on him, and rose on the other side to offer life to EVERYONE. It stops here, he seems to say. Take it out on me, I'll rise on the other side of it victorious, showing you the better way, the way that even swallows up violence, transforming it into redemption. God give me the grace to see people as you do.

You

You are beautiful. It was your original name, you creation, and also your destiny. You are beautiful. Beyond words. You have the divine in you. No one can take away your beauty. It is beyond what can be named, and thus cannot be erased. Shine. My friend, shine. Your shining will encourage me to do the same. Let us not hide under a bowel. There is no end to your beauty, because it is grounded in eternity. Let go of all fear, it's a shadow and mist. Awaken to your heritage. Far beyond the rays of the sun, deeper than the darkest night, brighter than the brightest star, you were made in God's image. Return. Where we are all equal. Where I need not prove myself right over you. Where we don't fight, where we need not hate, where prejudice doesn't exist, where true riches are found within. You cannot realize your full beauty. It is a thing which must be said of you, and that from God. We must live into it for all of eternity. You are good. You are. You.

Awake!

Awake! Rise! You are here, you are now. Tomorrow is for tomorrow, the past is just where it is, your time is now. Believe. Lift up your head. Hold not onto where you have been, let go of everything. ' Awake! Hold high the life that fills you so. You need not fear it, explain it away, deny it. PRESENCE. It means you are here, not to live tomorrow, not to live in the distant future, to live here and now. Today. Awake! Let not the drudgery stifle you pros, let not the ego hasten towards the dark. Your gaze was made for ONE, forever patient, forever present. Be held in the gap, let the bridge unite the disjointed sullen parts of who you are. You were not created in fragment, or for fragment. Let all that you are and have be slid into love. It is enough, it will hold you. Awake! Be alert, not anxious, but not in the past. Your destiny is at hand. It is found in the day to day, where the light is already shining. We need not track for it, searching into the ends of earth, the deepest oceans, the highest heights. Look only to the ONE place, where everything else takes its name. Everything in all of creation is pointing to it. Take you cue from the sun, traveling through the galaxy with intent, without diffusion. Awake! Be not drawn out of yourself, become more you every day. The you that remembered, and is remembering, and is reminded, traveling rapidly inward, and outward all at once, but is entirely present. The mystery of being in flux yet completely held. Awake! My friends, let us awake. I am for you, you are for Him, He is radically for us. The mystery is not found I alone, the mystery is shared, a relational existence, stemming from pure relationship. Where One doesn't exist without the Other. And the Third joins in the cosmic dance, the three erupting cosmic waves that speak a good word. Awake! Your defenses are not the end, they have served their purpose, but they do not own you. Be aware of them, only to let them go. Dig not your heals into the ground. Let your mind be opened, your heart captivated, your senses wooed. We only live once.

Life and Light

Life is already speaking, but also waiting. It is inviting, and looks forward to being fully revealed. It speaks, but it's voice cannot quite be heard at full volume. We can tune our perception, towards harmony with life. We may think if we do so, "the ride", life, will be fully reached, or we will have arrived upon our pinnacle. But we might be surprised to find is that life opens up to deeper life. Expansive ways of perceiving to more and deeper and more expansive ways of perceiving. Our unknowing feeds out knowing, which exposes deeper levels of unknowing, which leads to deeper levels of relating. Heaven. The afterlife. Is beyond our percepetion of it because we grapple with it with fragile minds. Trusting it isn't about the reward for us, but the humility from being brought deeper, wider and richer than we thought possible. Life, light, desires to be shared. Desires to resonate with the light created into each one of us. For we were made good, love is the ground of being, it was before, is was first, it is primary. The light inside catches glimpses of the light outside, and becomes stronger. I was made by this. Let me resonate with it. Being drawn to it increases our awareness of the inner light, which increases our trust of the outer light, until we give way, until all becomes LIGHT.

OPEN WIDE

The dreary shall not be my master. I shall not succumb. Do what you were meant for. To light up the world. If we go down, we go down in flames. If we are forgotten, we will not be forgotten to ourselves. If we come up against resistance, we touch our hearts, and feel more alive than ever. :You are wrong: we are told. But it feels right. We hesitate, but then remember that at the start of this all, was an invitation. We remember that before all, is a LOVE that is for all, forever, and trumps any hesitation that may be in my heart. I must give way to its flow, that my consciousness may be expanded where there is room for you, regardless of how different you are from me, regardless of the blocks between us. I must remember that love wins over fear. My worried and torn consciousness hopes for a home. A home calls to my consciousness, "elaborate" it says. "Tell me all of what you want. Tell me your dreams, for I dream for you also. Tell me your insecurities, for I care about them. Anything that keeps you from me is illusion. And illusion fades." "Sing to me, let your song be true. Not a truth that you don't buy into, not something your told to believe, but true to your own soul. For redemption happens in such a way. Take what you are, dare to dream, expand, grow, believe. Let body, mind, heart, soul all work together. I desire not compartmentalization, but unity, flow. Breathe in deep, and then breathe out accompanied by your dreams. Repeat.

Beauty

From the sky, in the air, from above, lifting from below.  Cannot be contained, it radiates greater than the sun, from sky to sea to air, into the deepest of deep, above the highest of high, beyond reach yet held for all.

And she called out, pleading, "Take refuge in me.  I will hold you onto the night is over."  It is time for me to give in, to stop my perilous wavering, to stop working towards stillness, and to give in to the stillness of old, the one present before me, beyond me, yet with me.  I need to come home.  My hurts cannot dictate my life any more, I will not be aimlessly lead about, driven to and fro, driven by fear.

Be my mother, my father, my love, my life.  You who are of old, yet entirely new.  You who loves deeper than my capacity to evaluate the depths of love.  You who hold us all, join us together in the contemplative love between each molecule.

As we go deeper, we realize we will never stop this journey.  The depths only open us up to new capacity for depth, in different areas and deeper in the areas already felt by us.  Heaven opens up to us, both livening and relativizing the air we breathe.

Open me up to ever new reality.

At the center of it all

At the center of it all is love, before anything else was, there was love.  Love was with God, love was God.  The Triune relationship radiated love into all that there was, it was enough in itself.  It sought to share what it had, thus creation.  No matter how dark the days seem, we can look back to what was before anything else was, and see what was meant to be.  Love reigns.  Love is supreme.  Love was first.  When I can't trust myself, when my motives seem askew, when I'm not sure if I'm wrong or right, up or down, I can look back to that which was before I ever made a notion in this universe.  Home is found in the returning, I must go back to my origins, what I was meant for.

Some may taste death before tasting love.  Some may never experience love in their whole life.  What of the beaten child?  What of the widowed wife?  Of the heartbroken man?

Love does not shy away from such questions.

Rather, it gives the world radical freedom, so that it can love it for what it is, not what it is controlled to be.  In order to be a world, the world must be free to be a world.  We need not pretend, we need not dress up and put on a pretty mask, we can name our pain, with all the truth we can muster.  Love encourages such things.

But this is not the end of the story.

Where we came from is the same place where all is headed.  Redemption cannot be hidden, it was, is, and finally will be.  All of history flows in the streams of eternity, we must widen our gaze, we must broaden our minds, and take in more.  We can only find our place in the stream of love that also includes all else.  Here, we are all one, yet all unique.  We find our independence, interdependence, and dependence all in one.  We fade into that which is Great.

We find what was at the beginning, that beckons us ask the questions of what is temporary, only to find that which is forever.  Our pain is but a tapestry being woven by the strokes of the Almighty into everlasting joy.

Lord, give me the faith to believe this.