God lift from me the intolerable burden
of my ignorance, arrogance, willful blindness, bitterness and resentment.
As I pray that others rise above the same faults and temptations.
I watched Fox News release a message this week:
There are terrible things afoot under
the surface of our society, and the perpetrators are coming for you
and coming for us.
And then I watched the Democrats respond in panic and anger, saying:
There are terrible things afoot under
the surface of our society, and the perpetrators are coming for you,
coming for us.
Are there terrible things afoot bubbling under the surface?
Is something coming for you
and for us?
Ask yourself how true that is of yourself
and your own life.
Have you addressed all that?
Are you concerning yourself with the dust in your enemy's eyes
instead of attending to the filth
that obscures your own sight?
Do we want accusation, suspicion, discord, derision and hatred?
Or the peace and prosperity and happiness that beckons to us at this moment,
like never before?
Who's the enemy here?
Is it the basket of deplorables?
Is it the freaks and the queers?
Is it the plumbers and carpenters
and tradesmen and managers who work honestly and diligently during
the day? And the soldiers who stalwartly defend the borders and protect us?
Is it the artists and visionaries whose expressions of unbridled creativity
entertain and rejuvenate us and who continually offer to us
an unending panoply of technological miracle?
Is it the institutions that guide
and protect us that so many lived and died to erect and establish
which for all their faults, have served us so well?
Do we want revenge,
or justice?
Do we want contempt
or mercy?
Do we want war
or peace?
And what are you aiming at in your heart of hearts?
I see even the best of men degenerating into the exchange of blows.
I see even the best of men identifying the enemy in our neighbors and friends.
I see even the best of men falling prey to cowardice and self-righteous anger.
It needs to stop.
I need to stop.
You need to stop,
before it's too late.
Who is the enemy here?
The snake in your heart?
The lies on your tongue?
The arrogance of your intellect?
The cowardice of our refusal to see?
The enemy is that which divides to sow discord.
The enemy is the pride and the fear
that stops us from lending a hand across the divide.
The enemy is the great and eternal adversary of mankind.
And if we demonize our brothers, our comrades-in-arms,
do we not precisely call that dread spirit forth?
Have we not yet learned?
Courage.
Trust.
Truth.
Love.
Even unto your enemy,
which is yourself.
God forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us.
May what is highest guide our vision.
May what is highest open our ears.
May what is highest guide our tongues.
And may we pray fearful of the hell we could so easily and carelessly create.
Deliver us from evil.
Shine a light into the corners of our dark hearts.
For thine is the Kingdom,
The power and the glory,
for ever and ever.
Amen.