For all people, we are driven into our own person wildernesses, that barren, harsh, unfriendly space between where we should be and where we are. We bring this on ourselves and refuse to examine what pulls us from serving humanity less than the promises of God. We ignore our better, inner selves to jump for the brass ring and hoard what we have grasped in our hands.
This is not the way God wants us to live, wants us to treat each other. What brings us together is God’s love, for God is Love and Love is God. in these times of separation, physical, emotional, and ideological, we absently fall to distrust and sometimes hate, when dealing with the other. This is unfortunate. God knows us by how we treat each other, how we show love to one another. If we are not together, not one with each other, it is impossible to be one with God.
We pray in our churches and rooms and the depart our spiritual meditations and revert to the prejudices and oppressions of society. We must reverse this trend, or we will not be able to live free. Our aggressions many times turn to violence, violence in our streets, and violence in our hearts. If left unchecked, this accelerating violence turns to open warfare; then we are all lost.
It is God that binds us to one another; it is God’s Love that brings us together; it is God’s Love that invites us to forgive those who have overstepped accepted boundaries. It is this Love that we must use to overcome. As the Negro spiritual says, “We shall overcome!” Let us remember what binds us.
© Russell Kendall Carter
Meditating to Heal 