Saturday, November 14, 2015

Deep Sadness

                                                  Finding Heart

Listen to your life. See it for the fathomless mystery it is. In the boredom and pain of it, no less than in the excitement and gladness: touch, taste, smell your way to the holy and hidden heart of it, because in the last analysis all moments are key moments, and life itself is grace.”
Frederick Buechner (Now and Then: A Memoir of Vocation)

I am thinking this morning of the terrified and brokenhearted people of France, who lost loved ones yesterday in a terrorist attack. Our world feels the agony of your loss. We also feel the weight of the millions of refugees fleeing war, who have washed up on European shores. The sadness and outrage of all of it is close to overwhelming. These are most difficult days.

We must find our way past the anger and the desire for immediate retribution to the larger and deeper heart of despair that is driving the unrest of our time. From the fury on American college campuses, to the black flags of revolution in the Middle East, human beings have resorted to rage and murder to express their hopelessness with life as usual. Inequity is the root cause of anarchy.

In the days ahead, as the latest of these desperate measures unfolds, let each of us, no matter where in the world we are, hold one another in our hearts and pray for answers. Let us pray also for leaders who are large enough to move beyond self-interest, and embrace the whole world as one people. Somewhere, in the midst of all this chaos, is the mystery of life's longing for itself, and the hidden heart of the human race seeking freedom.

                                             In the Spirit,

                                                 Jane

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