Do not be afraid, little flock. It is my Father's good pleasure to give you the Kingdom. ~ Luke 12:32
The game is not over yet. We are still under the loving hand of our Common Father, and the marching orders have not changed: to live and establish ourselves in alignment with the highest benchmarks of what we know human beings are capable of: courage, commitment, compassion, forgiveness, conscience, integrity. To simply keep walking toward these, arm and arm if at all possible, for there the force of individual integrity is vastly magnified. Until then, as we all navigate through this season of winnowing, it will be more important than ever for those of you who can stay with it, to hold fast to sobriety, integrity, impartiality, and métis (skillful action at exactly the right time). To be able to look sphinx-like into the eyes of this necessary winnowing and not wince or flail. Not to indulge in nostalgia, self-pity, blame, or rumination. To keep walking forward in forgiveness and quiet hope into the future. Our Father is still trying to give us the Kingdom; the timing depends on our readiness to bear it. Let us continue, quietly, with the readying.
Old traditions used to say that wisdom consists in the knowledge of the Word. Give us this wisdom to be able to listen, to accept, to receive, to practice the hospitality of the words, paying attention, reacting consequently, being struck, touched, or caressed by the words that come to us. And let us also learn, in turn, to speak the right words, to affirm people who speak in a life-giving way, to recreate ourselves with our own words, because each of them sprouts from the same dynamism from which the plants grow, life unfolds, the universe comes into being. The word is word when it has a speaker, when it speaks about something; the word is word when it speaks with something. Give us, O Creator of Life, this depth, this awareness, and this tremendous joy to discover in ourselves that creative power that we can speak, emit, and receive living words, words of eternal life, words that come of the peace, of the silence, of the transparency of everything. And then we may be able, more and more, to understand the language of many other speaking beings that may not articulate as we do.