Journal Journey
Rage, rage against the dying of the light. I feel a process happening in me, of which I am only partly conscious, that is a rebuilding after a ripping apart. It seems to me that wisdom comes from spiraling through the same core questions and attempts at answers, each time with a new set of tools and perspectives. Several of these have come through my life recently, processes amounting to 'training' in becoming a bearer and believer of possibility of a higher humanity. This all came to a sort of climax on Sunday morning.
What I'm refering to in this 'training' is the emotionally taxing journey into the deepest corners of what people do to one another in the name of power/greed/jealousy, etc.-- torture, genocide, creation of child soldiers. My eyes have seen the remnants of these, and heard from the mouths of those who have experienced them, enough that such words I read in texts come alive in emotion, refusing to let the academic sterility mask the reality of the sad phenomena we study. The more I struggle through the thick swamp of disbelief and despair of how we are capable of treating one another, the more my mind and heart are able to come into alignment and be strengthened, though never numb.
Sunday... a church service among a small congregation a short walk from home became the site of an unexpected internal battle. Among many things that were conjured up that morning, one was my reaction to the sermon delivered by a woman who recently returned to Brisbane after forty years as a missionary in Malaysia. As she spoke of moments of joy in bringing people to the Church, my judging mind lept to the number of people who carry the name 'Christian' and yet are responsible for countless acts of violence and death... But it's never a matter of labels, and within each person is this constant battle between constructor and destructor. We come as we are. For every act of horror there is potential for reflection, rebirth, renewal. Can we build our communities to support each other in tapping this potential and creatively exploring it to the infinite realms, beyond the confines we repeatedly assign ourselves to...?
What I'm refering to in this 'training' is the emotionally taxing journey into the deepest corners of what people do to one another in the name of power/greed/jealousy, etc.-- torture, genocide, creation of child soldiers. My eyes have seen the remnants of these, and heard from the mouths of those who have experienced them, enough that such words I read in texts come alive in emotion, refusing to let the academic sterility mask the reality of the sad phenomena we study. The more I struggle through the thick swamp of disbelief and despair of how we are capable of treating one another, the more my mind and heart are able to come into alignment and be strengthened, though never numb.
Sunday... a church service among a small congregation a short walk from home became the site of an unexpected internal battle. Among many things that were conjured up that morning, one was my reaction to the sermon delivered by a woman who recently returned to Brisbane after forty years as a missionary in Malaysia. As she spoke of moments of joy in bringing people to the Church, my judging mind lept to the number of people who carry the name 'Christian' and yet are responsible for countless acts of violence and death... But it's never a matter of labels, and within each person is this constant battle between constructor and destructor. We come as we are. For every act of horror there is potential for reflection, rebirth, renewal. Can we build our communities to support each other in tapping this potential and creatively exploring it to the infinite realms, beyond the confines we repeatedly assign ourselves to...?
posted by Amanda Joy at 4:50 AM
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