OPEN OUR SELF TO OUR HATE AND TO OUR LOVE

Here are two interesting facts that today seem relevant to me:

1. Anyone --  male or female -- who has not gone on journeys of powerlessness will invariably abuse power.
2. Hatred holds a group together much more quickly and easily than love and inclusivity. (Both come from Fr. Richard Rohr's "Daily Meditation" of last October.)

I find both quotes equally interesting, probably because I can see me so clearly in them...not that I've ever abused power, never having had much to begin with, but in the past I've invited abuse through my fear of being powerless. Hiding from my own powerlessness over my fear of looking the fool, of being left out, of being wrong by speaking out, etc., has been my bane.

Hatred gathering others more easily than love is a really uncomfortable identifying point. Here again, not that I hate really, but looking deep into that statement, I recognize myself in my judgments. More friendships than I care to admit to have begun with finding someone who agrees with my negative judgment of another. A judgment is just hate before it sours. Starts out simple enough, turns bad before we're fully aware of it...like milk left out on a warm day.

I wonder if hate doesn't hold a group together through the feeling it gives us of opaqueness...as if our hate were a shield, and when banded together with others' hate keeps us safe...or, even better, superior.

Love, though, is utterly transparent...open to the kindness of strangers and to the slings and arrows of hatred. Transparency banded together is still transparent (uh-oh); it is, however, the only path open to God (amen).

Life's lesson to learn is: Opening our self, our mind and our heart, to our fear and to our love frees us. Turn hate out, invite love in. There...the How-To book for becoming free from the bondage of self.

Thank you.