Saturday, June 27, 2015

A Credo after these Days

Some days ago I received a gift in the mail. It had no fewer than 37 stamps stuck on the outside of it and it was wrapped in paper. An 85 year old sister of mine had been collecting my writings over the years and as part of her paring down, she sent me a binder full of them.

So many memories are in these pages...each poem or letter or essay is a point of time on the journey that has brought me to the here and now... Many of the pieces served their moment and can retire to history, some can be reworked and used again on different occasions.

One pair of pages, though, stood out, especially during these last couple of days when there has been a concentration of beautiful and devastating events in the world. Sometime in the early 2000s I wrote a creed. It got posted early on in my blogging career.

Finding it again, just now, inspires me to write one as who I am at This moment.

I Believe--in the wonder that is God.

I believe the wonder of God is caught up in Love and I believe Love will lead me home. Love for me is all about God and the God who has my heart filled to overflowing is expansive, uncontainable, passionate, and utterly astounding. This Love has no room for hate. No room for "not welcome," for "better than," or for "not worthy."

And God calls me on it when I veer down any other path and start filling up on something less.

Love has no room for bombs. It has no room for guns wielded against innocents, for prejudice, for condemnation, for subtraction or division.

This Love I believe in has room only for multiplication and addition. This Love is about life, and transformation and not being alone, about compassion and mercy and justice.

This Love is what calls me to act, calls me to put my gifts and my talents at the service of a wounded world that is teeming with contradiction, violence on a horrific scale, devastating righteousness, grace-filled humanity, deep beauty, and unshakable hope.

When all is said and done, I believe that Love is the light shining in the darkness and the darkness will not ever overcome it.

This I believe.