I often wonder what it would be like if I finally got it? If I understood what for many, is nonsense, absurd, even immoral if acted upon. Lives can often be weighed down by the sense of wrongs done, or injustices done to oneself. How to handle such a thing? The feelings; the angst, anger and pain that flow from such a situation, that is common in our human lives. Such burdens are carried, so many deep wounds unable to heal, so much weight, it is a wonder that we do not sink into the earth. Though we often put each other there before their time, the earth wet from the blood of the many destroyed, in the name of justice.
Cycles within cycles, and unending path, passed on from one generation to the next. The intensity only growing as the fire fed, revenge sought, justice desired, even if the innocent suffer also. Which draws them into the ever growing circle of bloodshed and violence and the endless, bottomless void of hatred seeking fulfillment, yet finding none, making the world a desert, cold and dead, empty For fire given back only increases the flame, such is the trap of mankind, a very large spider web ever growing capturing mankind’s pain and its inability to stop the seeming never ending journey. Perhaps one day to make this world into a living hell, though it seems at times to come close to it already.
The only way out is the one not taken, perhaps it cannot be, though many like me parrot its teaching, themselves unable to live up to it scrutiny. In order to stop the flame, it must be starved, by showing mercy to those who do not deserve it. For mercy is not mercy if deserved. God’s mercy is freely given, for he forgave those who crucified him, knowing that they knew not what they were doing. Perhaps none of us really does, know what we are doing, acting out of passion, habit, jus another round of irrational tit for tat.
Br. Mark Dohle, OCSO
Holy Spirit Monastery
