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.