“Do you think that I have come to bring peace to the earth?
No, I tell you, but rather division!”
—Luke 12.51
Not us-versus-them. Not good people on one side
and everybody else on the other. Not you against neighbors.
But you, distinct from what others want of you.
You, not what will please them.
The real you, true and unmodified,
standing for what you know and care for,
regardless of how others balk and resist and criticize
and cajole and manipulate and persecute and crucify.
Beware: those whose hearts are unwhole
will try to draw you in to complete them;
but you cannot be them for them. This is the great division.
You must be yourself, and let their incompleteness go,
without ceasing to love them. Let them press against you
even as you stand for them.
Jesus prays for strength for you to stand as self,
to stand without pleasing, without apologizing.
Stand with hope and trust, though you be alone—
for, standing alone, you find your true companions,
bound not by opinion but by the Whole, What Is,
given, not made, the Body of Christ.
__________________
Steve Garnaas-Holmes
Unfolding Light
www.unfoldinglight.net
August 12, 2019