What Will You Choose?

I read through the comments on a post about an elderly man being detained by ICE the other day. They carried him out in the snow wearing only shorts and an open t-shirt. You can guess who was there for the comment party.

Mr. He Shouldn’t Have Come Here Illegally was front and center waving his fists. Mrs. If He Just Complied He Would Be Fine clapped quietly in the back row. Mr. Wake Up Your Brainwashed was playing drums on stage. And Ms. Where is Your Humanity was crying silently in the corner wishing it would all be over. The cacophony of voices and blame is enough to make anyone go mad.

Especially when the prideful person warming the pew on any given Sunday would have been the same person yelling, “Crucify Him” a few thousand years ago, in another story, while wanting to belong to another group. Maybe they would have worn red robes instead of red hats but their sandals would have still been soiled with hypocrisy.

It’s so easy to blame and judge. It’s so much harder to love, forgive and have compassion for other people. Especially when being right feels so good.

I was sitting in service at a Unity Church this Sunday. The pastor was talking about forgiveness. He asked us all to think of someone in our life who may be rubbing us the wrong way. Then he asked us to close our eyes and imagine sending them peace, love, joy and God’s abundant blessings.

He followed it up by saying, “Next time you do this, you will do it far more sincerely than you just did.” We all laughed because we knew it was true. Forgiveness is not for the faint of heart. It’s a willingness to bypass your ego’s comfort zone and surrender the safety of your rightness for a peace that may or may not be immediate.

The real deal is opinions keep us divided and what we need right now is union. Not some watered down version of love and light that bypasses the darkness or some militant strain of Christian Nationalism that puts the president over the prince of peace.

We need to access that divine love underneath it all and to love our social network neighbor like ourself.

Or at least that’s what Jesus would do.

#artasresistance