We are so very laudable, to have nurtured the desire to help ease the suffering of others through oh these many eons of Heel-over-Heart. The outcry over mass shootings, the most recent at the Sikh temple, is emblematic of how we have miraculously shepherded our collective human Heart through all the powerfully vested applications of the overseer’s Heel.
(Funny, that in our culture, to be a ‘heel’ is somewhat disparaging. But oh how mightily we stomp and pulverize!)
So, the question is, how do you reach the disturbed fringes who do these sorts of things? Do we study and research and develop policy to help individuals deal with their stresses? To prevent the harm grinding our children’s psyches to dirt behind closed doors? Do we stand up for the women and children who are being beaten and trapped and demoralized every single minute of every single day on every single block in any city, town or hamlet in America? So that their thinking does not further derange?
Or do you wander through the burroughs knocking on doors?
Jesus had the answer, but he couldn’t transfer the key to the bulk of humanity. I’ve heard it said that Judas was his only enlightened disciple. So if he couldn’t do it, we are really going to have to put on our thinking caps! And burnish the heart in ways that we, even in our seeming ‘goodness,’ can’t even imagine…
He (and others of his ilk) ask us to embrace the Whole of us. That means our demons too. Our lack of acceptance of the demons on the outside reflects the inability of individuals to relate respectfully with their own selves on the inside.
We are mostly a MESS that way! Otherwise, who would fund the multi-billion-dollar self-improvement section?
Anyway – then the ‘shadow’ is projected, and those who represent that which we don’t want to be, are the ones that society rejects and neglects. These are the ones we love to hate. The homeless, abused, drug addicted, obese, disorderly, sexually diverse, underclass, felons, pedophiles etc. All of our marginalized populations are those who are scapegoated — a venerable tradition from Judaic times, which symbolically cleansed of sin by casting the offending demons into a goat, who was then banished into the desert to die…
Which, as we practice it, only further pressures the afflicted – until, like a tick, we pop them, and then gasp at the blood-spray.
We don’t see the blood on our own hands.
So it is good to remember that it’s an inside job first. Then we have something to stand on — and something of value to share. Let’s bring compassion home, knead it with tenderness and let it rise in the warmth of our own heart of hearts…
That way, when company comes, we’ll be ready!
daily grist 