Lent 2024, Day 32: And.

Today’s the 9th anniversary of my dad’s death. My autoimmune disease has been kicking my butt for the last week. The country’s ever-growing political divide is stress-inducing. People here– except Boomers, but especially Zoomers- are pretty dang unhappy. Could it be all the loneliness? The social media disinformation? The rise in hate crimes? Whatever the reason(s), I’ve been feeling kinda crappy today, so I read a bit from And: The Restorative Power of Love in an Either/Or World by Felicia Murrell. I really needed it today:

The thing is,

we’ve got to feel the pain to heal it and then

we’ve got to heal.

Pain demands we pick a side,

but we don’t have to.

We can choose to side with love

and love sees fully.

Love is inclusive of both the

victim and the perpetrator.

In our black and white,

right or wrong,

polarized society,

we demand allegiances

and then we castigate or accept others

based on their loyalty to their ideals

instead of loving them for their humanity.

We all have the potential

within us to do depraved things

(“Wretched man that I am”1)

It doesn’t mean our depraved

actions define us.

It means we need

Love to deliver us from evil,

and sometimes that evil lurks within.

When Love transforms our heart,

our actions align with the truth of our being

and we remember that which we already are:

the very good of God’s creation,

created in the image and likeness of Love.

1 Romans 7:24.

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