All I have to offer is some very difficult work
Since I wrote my last blog, a war began. One too close to home, too frightening, too lopsided, and of course destructive and tragic. And too obviously wrong because it was initiated and perpetrated by one man for his vision of restored and increased power, unprovoked. Shocking that it is happening now until with hindsight, you see the path of his other aggressions over the past 15 years until this point.
Because my mind has been reeling from this event, and stressed by this event, I had difficulty finding a clear focus for a blog this week. Then I remembered the following amazing claim. (I don’t know where I heard or read it and I can’t attribute it to anyone. I hope I am forgiven for that.) Here it is, “Love heals everything, the past, the present and the future.” This might sound trite or pie-in-the-sky now. However, I was out on an errand this morning, and I heard a Ukrainian woman on a radio program say from her heart and I am paraphrasing, “we must act with love so that we don’t become monsters. We must forgive, and act always from the heart.”
Unpacking the saying, forgiveness, a form of love, heals the past, acts of love and forgiveness maintain connection, respect, and love in the present, and if we can do these things, the future is assured. The woman on the radio said (again a paraphrase), “do something, anything, to be loving and human right now.”
This is very difficult work.