Fr Richard Rohr's "Daily Meditation" today quotes Coretta Scott King speaking of her husband's commitment to peaceful resistance. In her talk were the words, nonviolent resistance [is] the means of stirring and awakening moral truths in one’s opponents.
I see! I see! With those few words, my eyes are opened. I understand that responding with peaceful resistance, with nonviolence or love, is to invite love and peace...there is nothing for the other to resist.
In grasping what peaceful resistance means to me, I know that to do peaceful resistance is to do and to do and to continue doing until I am living it without thought, without selection, without judgment...but with the option, to quote our beloved John Lewis, to cause good trouble. Nobody is born to be another's doormat.
That makes clear Gandhi's statement, Nonviolence cannot be preached. It has to be practiced.
I have known all the right words, have practiced them, for years. Ah, but without a sacred purpose, meaning not for the purpose of stirring and awakening moral truths in one’s opponents.
This blinding flash of the obvious tells me that I need a mentor who lives nonviolent resistance. No better time than now to begin learning to love not by my want-to but by my need-to, a very different level of love.
There. I give over to God to lead me to my guide, please and thank you.
Thank you.
No comments:
Post a Comment