We must not falter in our opposition,
and yet we cannot be consumed by an expected outcome.
Ann: Mr. Cummings?
Elijah: Yes, Ann, I feel it imperative to come back to speak to you and your readers because I sense that many of you may have lost heart.
We are finding in this time of reckoning that the human being is capable of much courage and much cowardice, sometimes at the same time. What we cannot always find is our detachment. We are attached to outcomes, to people, to causes, to comfort and wealth. Any one of these can produce a tyranny from whose false narrative we cannot escape.
The great spiritual masters teach us that attachment to outcomes, causes, and relationships curtail our freedom. It is our job to commit, to fight for the cause of justice and then release the consequences to the fine justice of the Lord’s holy reckoning.
This we are called to do at this time. This we are compelled to do in order to be effective functioning humans being. Otherwise we will be consumed by obsession.
It is easy to fall into this trap when you see injustice and violence perpetrated on the weak and vulnerable at the behest of those whose only objective is the enhancement of their own power. And yet we have many facets to our lives which must be attended to if we are to be effective in this fight. If love is to be our primary moving force, then our daily concerns, laugher as well as tears, must be part of a balanced life. We must never forget to see each other as human beings, even when, most particularly when, we are not acting as such.
Render unto Caesar that which is Caesar’s. The Congress is now awake to its own vulnerability. They had been lulled into thinking that the false comfort of tradition and history made them impervious to violent overthrow. As a result, those who had no respect for either were able to mobilize forces to strike down the primary bulwark of our society, our elected government, in the service of the elevation of those who would deny a diverse society.
Many of us who have been on the receiving end of these tides of history are not shocked, not even surprised, because we saw the dark underpinnings of all that tried to cloak their nefarious purpose in a false promise of a return to the good old days, days that were, in fact, a living hell for many of our citizens.
Fortunately, this rag tag group did not succeed in and have, in exposing their true objectives, given the rest of us a wakeup call. It is up to us to respond in a balanced way, neither racing into another ill-prepared reaction nor sitting back in complacency and hoping that this group of would-be oppressors will go away on their own.
We must take well considered action. We must not falter in our opposition, and yet we cannot be consumed by an expected outcome. We must be prepared to persevere if all does not go our way, to pivot and respond as necessary. We keep our eyes on the goal of equal opportunity for all that was promised by our Constitution and codified in the Bill of Rights, and, in that steadfastness, we trust in the Lord.
We do all that we can, and then we deal with whatever comes.
January 10, 2021
Thanks, Laurie, really makes me take a second look at this.
This reminds me of praying for others - with our own intent of what we audaciously might presume, assume the outcome of our prayers MUST be for someone else.
When a beloved, dear one it s dying...is our praying for their healing in their highest calling, or simply us presuming so when, essentially it might be preventing one's spirit from passing, as was previously agreed prior to incarnation?
In relationship to "letting go of the outcome", perhaps this is something to take a second, deeper look at as well.
We are mere humans here, after all.