We belong together... Inviting the world into your heart
Jan 2, 2021
Saying For Today: And you know, now, to turn anyone away from your heart, that is to turn yourself away from your own heart - which is really, after all, our heart.
Amish Homestead. Easton, ME
Prejudice, literally, "to judge ahead," so, to decide what you think of others even before you meet them, allow yourself to know them. Prejudice is our act of ignorance - our - Is anyone free of all prejudice? - ignorance, for ignore-ing. We are socialized into this ignoring.
Hate is taught - Love is our birthright
We inherit the lies that perpetuate and justify prejudice - culturally, religiously, racially, economically, nationally -; we, too, can be among those who expose those lies as lies - lies we will no longer give credence to by either our actions or our silence. We can create a new world... we are. The intensity of the darkness at this time is a sign of the increasing power of the Light.
white curtain falling through sky nightfall falls - snow remains snow
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While penning this writing, the following song, "Put a Little Love in Your Heart," came to my mind-heart. I had not heard it in many years. It speaks to the spirit of this posting. Jackie DeShannon first performed the tune in 1969, and she had co-written it. We need the message as much today as then, both being times of challenge to long-standing social prejudices.
If you have problems accessing it below, the video can be viewed on the original site via the upper left vocalist-title...
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When a preschool lad, my mom drove my two brothers and me by a school in our predominantly 1960s, southern, white town - we lived in Georgia. She informed us it was the school where the black students attended. I got the message early that one color belonged off to themselves and another color off to themselves. One people lived on one side of the train tracks, the other on the other. We two races were non-belongers to one another but belongers within our appropriate places - appropriate the important word. The two did not mix and mingle - we ignored one another, we did not know one another. No one told me why. This oddity, it seemed, was considered so obvious, it needed no logical explanation. And at my all-white church, blacks were not welcome and, yet, I was told there how Christ loved all equally and anyone, accepting Christ, would go to heaven to live happily and forever together. No one explained this oddity to me, either. Thankfully, I came to see there was no logical explanation to give, for it was not - is not - logical at all: it was nothing more than a belief - an excuse-, passed generation to generation - to me.
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A shabby-looking fellow, down on his luck, enters a church that caters to the uppity folk, not the down-and-out. Spotting the disheveled man in soiled clothes, a deacon, worried about the church's image, goes hurriedly to him, after that leading him out into the foyer to the side so as hopefully not to be seen.
The deacon asks him if he needs help, that the church is glad to give him money for food or gas. The man says, "No, thanks. I was praying for a place to worship, and the good Lord told me to come to this church." The deacon suggests the man go pray more, and, possibly, he might get a different answer - the deacon daring not tell him his kind of people are not welcome. The man walks out.
The next Sunday morning, this same fellow returns, dressed shabby and smelling icky like before. The deacon, welcoming incomers, greets him at the door. The deacon asks, "Didn't you get a different answer?" "Yes, I did," says the man. "I said to the good Lord, 'Lord, I visited that church you led me to, but they don't seem to want me there.' And the Lord told me, 'Don't worry about it, friend, I've been trying to get into that church for years and haven't succeeded either.'" Then, the ragged-looking fellow turns around and leaves. ... And when the impoverished man walks away, "God," too, walks away - again.
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When will we learn - to turn away the other from our hearts is to turn "God" away from our hearts, and to welcome the other into our hearts is to receive "God" into our hearts?
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Presence comes to us disguised as the other - clothed in otherness - the one who appears a non-belonger - the impoverished one, the odd one, the homeless one, the one of a different color skin, the been-in-prison one, the one with different religious beliefs, the one from another country - all the ones we have been told do not belong with us by those who believe themselves as among the only ones who do belong with us.
To welcome the Sacred means to include all the "so-called" non-belongers inside your heart, for you have come to see they do belong. And you know, now, to turn anyone away from your heart, that is to turn yourself away from your own heart - which is really, after all, our heart.
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*(C) Brian K. Wilcox, 2021
*Brian's book, An Ache for Union: Poems on Oneness with God through Love, can be ordered through major online booksellers or the publisher AuthorHouse. The book is a collection of poems based on mystical traditions, especially Christian and Sufi, with extensive notes on the teachings and imagery in the poetry.
*To contact Brian, write to LotusoftheHeart@gmx.com .
