Daily Reflection

Forgiveness is the Language of Courage

i for one
will not 
go quietly 
into that press 
of cold 
unraveling. 

their fear 
and bitter anger 
yields only 
to entropy.

who else
will stand
with me, and
speak their defiance
in the language of courage
and forgiveness?

Vincent Van Gogh wrote: “However meaningless and vain, however dead life appears, the man of faith, of energy, of warmth … steps in and does something.”

With every angry post, every share, every self-righteous comment, every tweet, every shallow selfie, we make the lines that divide us ever brighter and with every unfollow, every hollow beating of the drum of empty wisdom of dead sages, we slide towards the dread press of entropy.

Once energy is used up, in the service of vanity, of anger, of spite, of blame, it is gone to us, and it will take more energy to reorganise it.

Only consciousness, only the grace of true forgiveness, only the generosity of compassion and the courage of curiosity bring more light into this world.  Only stillness and the decision to provide shelter for others brings new gravity into this place.

There are two forces at work in all of life: the will to Life, or Being (creative) and the will to Not Be (destructive). Our minds are driven by fear, by tribalism, by suspicion, by our wounds already received and the ones we fear we may yet get.  So we try hard and push the blame There, on ‘Them’. We try and have more, so that we might be enough. This path can only ever lead to entropy, the cold energy death, nothing to love and nothing to be loved.

And what the moment is asking of us, is the courage to be ourselves, for you to be simply and unutterably yourself, not to have the power to fix it all, simply the courage to ‘go first’.

The reason the original idea of a Messiah was so compelling, is because the fairytale was that they would come with flame and sword and smite your enemies.  We are all someone else’s ‘They’.

Put down the knives.

We haven’t actually got forever.

No One Else is Coming