Inside Out

For too long we’ve judged people by their appearances. If their skin was a different color than ours then they were inferior. If their gender was different than our, a whole new set of prejudicial thinking arose. The person’s size, weight, height, and features froze in our attitudes that we’d embrace. And, it would take much undoing to change our perception of another because we’d been taught to live externally, outside in, and by flesh! Sad!

St. Francis of Assisi wrote, “There are beautiful and wild forces within us”. I know that the “wild” might scare you but don’t let it. But in order to see and embrace such forces, one would have to spend time with that “other” and get to know them by the Spirit as the apostle Paul reminded us. We have been told and sold that we’re somehow better, different, and superior to those “others”. It’s the lie of the ego that has lured us into the trance of separation that truly does not exist.

We are ALL ONE!

And we come from ONE. That source goes by many names and even that is divisive. You call the Source Allah, others call that Source God. It’s one and the same. Just because you are from the East and I am from the West doesn’t change the Source that doesn’t come from anywhere because the Source is everywhere!

The Sufi poet Rumi encouraged us all to get with the program of inside out living and to “go with the flow” as he wrote, “If you put your soul against this oar with me, the power that made the universe will enter your sinew from a source not outside your limbs, but from a holy realm that lives IN us.” And in us ALL let me add.

We need to have enough spiritual integrity and humility to lay down our perceived superiority and “worthiness” to esteem others not just on par with our own being but higher. It’s what the Christian religion says but that which Christians seldom do. Orthopraxy trumps orthodoxy any day.

I need to love me enough to love you, but I can’t love me enough to love you if I don’t love God and the Oneness that we all are first. That lifestyle is not easy and that’s why (in part) that the Christian LOGO is the CROSS!