Connected

My dogs woke me up early this morning barking at phantoms in the back yard.  I am sure they saw them, but they time I arrived, they had fled, so they may as well have been phantoms.  It was too early to get up early, so I returned to bed and settled my brain as best I could.  It is those thoughts that I wish to share now.

What if we were all connected?  Closer than siblings, but something akin to that.  What if the killer and the one killed were our family or even a part of us, some part of a collective?  What if Donald Trump and Kim Jong-un were all part of each of us?  We would not be responsible for their words and actions, but somehow still obligated to them.

The Episcopal liturgy again resonates in my head, Love as Christ loved us and gave himself for us, a living sacrifice for the whole world.  I heard and said those words so many times, they really lost their meaning.  Especially the sacrifice part.  Are we any kinder to one another than we were 2000 years ago?  Uh, no.  Sorry, but that sacrifice seems wasted on the likes of humanity.  But perhaps we are still charged with the task of recognizing our bonds to one another and to the planet.

We don't have to like any of it.  But we are tasked with it just the same.  I don't think it means to stand idly by.  I think we can still be appalled by the behavior of others and work to right wrongs, but going about it with the same energy that we would to change our own behavior.  Eat the salad because you ate the hamburger earlier.  Don't hate the hamburger or the fact that you ate it, that is useless energy.  Accept it, move on, work for something better.  Acknowledge and move on.  Be better yourself first.  Recognize your connection to everyone and everything else.  Accept and connect. 

 
You can't change me, I can't change you.  But we can love one another.  And recognize that we would not wish for the suffering of the other, so we can extend a little effort to ease the burden of the other.  Martin Luther King Jr said "they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character." Now take that a little further and focus on not the behaviors or skin color or any other external wrappings and look only at energy and see what connects us.  The air we breathe connects us to one another.  What if that is love?  What if that is what we are responsible for?

Could I love as I breathe?  Could I share love as I share my viruses and bacteria?

Initially written and not published, May 24, 2017