Friday, October 17, 2003

"Hating people is like burning your own house down to get rid of a rat" Harry Fosdick

I find that the people who are very much in need, damaged, bruised in different ways ...... often hate others so much. The hate that comes out, the language, the waste of emotion ........

I often say to people that this is doing you more damage than you may ever guess. That festering inside of evil against another seems to me to me like a festering cancer. (this reminds me of the newspaper called 'the daily mail') We are responsible for you own behaviour not the behaviour of others. We can help others. We can work with them. But we cannot control another.

"Man must evolve for all human conflict a method which rejects revenge, aggression and retaliation. The foundation for such a method is love"
Martin Luther King

I spend time with people. I want to. I must do.
So many are damaged.
Can you imagine a person in front of me this week, racked to the soul in sobs. Broken damaged and battered over 20 years and hurting like hell before my eyes. Sobbing blocking the words from stumbling out of the lips. Body doubled as if in severe physical pain. I guess that emotional pain was WAS also in the physical.
At the same time, another person was howling accusations and blame with fury.
Persons of pain, in conflict and no pity in view. I felt deep hurt that this was unfolding in front of me.

Now this is real. I cannot tell you the history, the proceeding. How and what was he outcome. Outcome? ...... what is an outcome short of heaven?
Life rolls on, does it not, and you have only a very thin slice of a cake presented to you ........ to feel.

How to love in that situation and the daily hurly burly is the question.
It grabs me when I wrestle with this daily. I have the stomach knots too.
I come back to the the principle that there is an core value, that this person in-front of me- being hurt or doing the hurting ....... is valuable firstly to God. If we believe and have God as a centre to our lives, he must be here on the case with this one. He the great lover cannot turn the head away when behaviour is ugly. Those persons are valuable and need undeserving love, the Grace of God ...... just like me.
A second principle is, methinks, that abusing person is a product of abuse, rather than love, and the answer must be related to love rather than further abuse.

We are still left with 'how' do we love.
How can I answer that .....I cannot.
I can only share how I instinctively respond, behave, react in some stumbling manner.
Somehow it is seeing the pain. That pain you recognize in yourself. Because you have had some. That brings out the compassion, the desire to love, the words to love, the actions to love, the eyes to love.
And it is about seeing below the surface. Below the behaviour. Deep .......... to the soul.

Very often there is a major lack of understanding. I do not understand the hurt, the pain, the experience the person is living in or living from. That is why the first mentioned is so vital. We will not know the reasons, the sparks which have lit the fires.
This person is valuable. Both of them. However damaged.
Precious, unique, valuable, beautiful.
....................................................................... and we are called to love......................