I Was Going To Write...

I was going to write Part 2 of The Illiteracy of the Heart, but got side-tracked by a slew of "positive thoughts"... Normally, I revel in the positive. I deal mostly in the positive within the daily life of my family. But today, the onslaught of "positive" has got me irritated... I wrote down a few of them as they came across my view...

​Happiness is a choice...

One of the most courageous decisions you will ever make is to finally let go of whatever is hurting your heart and soul...

To love existence is to love what is indifferent to you... (I'm not sure that is a positive...)

​It is during our darkest moments that we must focus on the light...

I am able to let go of fear... (A standard affirmation...)

​And perhaps the worst one of all: Jesus Saves...

So why do these "positive thoughts" antagonize me? I thought about it for awhile and decided it is because of how fundamentally disrespectful they are... How so? Let's say that your only child recently passed away, and now, unexpectedly, you are alone and looking ahead, you can only anticipate being alone for the rest of your life: for this person, honestly, why not just give her a steady supply of heroin? Or what about the farmer (there are a lot of them here in Wisconsin) who is watching, day-by-extremely-slow-day, his farm go under: the farm that has been in the family for nearly a hundred years: the farm that was his dream and now that of his three sons? What about him? Is a "positive thought" going to prevent him from going into his closet, unlocking his gun safe, and blowing his brains out (suicide is an epidemic among farmers here in Wisconsin)?

Now I back up to "indifference" mentioned in a quote above. Isn't that the stunning reality for many of us (for most, perhaps)? Life just seems to be fucking indifferent to us, to our losses, and to all of the goddamn pain that is ours every goddamn minute of every goddamn day... I wanna kick the next person in the teeth who says to me, "You gotta work it!" To hell with the positive! I just get so tired of feeling...

​So, here I sit in my little study, thinking and writing... and knowing...
 
​And knowing, that perhaps the three most important words in the English language are
"I see you..." At its root, these three words are evidence of a deep understanding and compassion: they were the essential work of my old Soup Kitchen... As I used to say to volunteers, "Sure, we fix good food, but our real work is conversation. It's seeing people and respecting them. Who knows their story? Who knows the burdens that they carry and that kill them every single day?" 

And yes, I'm not serious about the un-importance of "positive thoughts": without the positive thoughts and words and actions of Michelle, Donovan, Devin, and Rose of Sharon everyday, I'd likely be a squishy puddle on some highway somewhere... But the "positive" without the showing up of "I see you" does nothing for anyone... These thoughts, in my mind, are bending towards what I wrote yesterday (the new page on this website: Practical Praxis)...

Life is incredibly hard (for a very many of us). Does it always have to be so? Is it "enough" to say "Jesus Saves" when perhaps what really needs to happen is for you to save someone? I mean, if we all saved someone, who would still be hurting and feeling abandoned? Why put all the work on Jesus? Why not, instead, be Jesus? I mean, again, didn't he say, "Whatsoever you do to the least person among you, you do to me"? A living faith is an active faith. A living faith is a rEvolution in Obvious Motion. Our remembrance of the Divine Beloved simply must lead to our daily choice to be simply loving, and inevitably these practices open the heart for compassion and adoration... 

St. Francis said that we are supposed to become the Mothers of God... in other words, we give birth to the Divine Beloved each time that we see another being as worthy of our loving action... This is the core Franciscan insight... Your initiation into the Franciscan Family is your choice to become another Mother of God... I long for the day when we all know that to live and act as Mothers of God is the fulfillment of God's hunger for Paradise on Earth...