Tag: faith

The People I Love

Mary LongLeave a comment

I’m writing this after a restless night, the result of an image I saw before going to bed. I’ve seen many of the horrific abuses being done to our immigrant brothers and sisters, but this one left me speechless.

Two men in uniform are smashing the driver’s side window of a car as they are grabbing a woman behind the wheel, who looks to be in her forties or fifties. She’s speaking Spanish to the woman who is crying and filming from the passenger seat as these men bark at her and drag her out of the car. I saw this image shortly after I watched a commercial where a government representative told all illegal immigrants to leave our country or face the consequences.

Like you, I spend many days asking how this can possibly be America. How did we allow this to happen?

These questions trouble me in ways so deep it’s sometimes hard to carry on with normal life.

But I think the most difficult thing I’m wrestling with is all the people I’ve known and loved my entire life who not only voted for this but are cheering on these horrors being inflicted on our fellow human beings.

These are people who’ve been there for me throughout my life, who I’ve laughed and cried with. These are the people who I believed would be by my side until I left this earth, but I’ve not spoken to any of them since the inauguration and these horrors began to unfold.

It’s not because I no longer love them. It’s because I’m no longer certain that we hold common ground. It’s because I find it hard to laugh and joke with them knowing what is happening is something they support.

If you’d have asked me I would have told  you that they are all good and kind people and would never celebrate harm being inflicted on others.

But the fact that they would vote for this hateful, vindictive man, let alone applaud these violent and abusive actions has left me wondering. Can you be a good and kind person and still celebrate violence inflicted on others? It’s something I’m trying to understand. I’m trying to understand how many of them sit in those pews every Sunday and sing praises for Jesus, while supporting the suffering and abuse of our brothers and sisters.

I know you cannot hate others without being filled with hate yourself. I know you cannot cause harm to others unless you are someone causing harm to yourself. I know these hateful words and actions come from a lack of love within, but it is still hard to process. I have compassion for their inner pain but cannot accept their need to inflict it on others.

Loving them is not in question. My love for them has not lessened. But I’m also seeing that loving someone and accepting their actions don’t always coincide.

Hating them is not an option. How can I rail against the hatred that has taken over our country while adding more hatred to it? No, I don’t hate them at all.

I have known tragedy and heartbreak in my life, but this is one I’ve never faced before.  This has upended the foundation I built my life on. I am grateful to have a firm belief system founded in a spiritual path void of traditional religious beliefs, but it is still challenging to ingest all that is happening. Some days I have to unplug from all of it and get very quiet. Going within and connecting with whatever it is that created all of us. It’s the only way I’ve found that is helping me survive this insanity.

My greatest hope is that they’re so insulated in their bubbles of propaganda that they are  oblivious to what’s actually happening. That the selective news they watch is feeding them only what they choose to hear and not the truth of the pain and destruction raining down on the world as a result of their choice, and that when they realize the truth they will withdraw their support.

I have no delusions of an immediate ‘kumbaya’ revival. Figuring out what takes over a person that allows them to be indifferent to the suffering of others is beyond my pay grade.

But I know the human heart, and I know it was built for love, compassion and support. This is evident whenever tragedy strikes. I always think of 9/11 and the stories we heard that resulted from it. How people not only helped each other regardless of the color of their skin, but gave their lives so others could live.

Whoever or whatever created us all implanted in us an innate need to be kind and compassionate. To aid each other and cooperate with each other.

How so many got so far off this path is not something I can fully explain or comprehend.

But I do know deep in my bones that love is the most powerful force in the universe, and it may be delayed, but it is never denied.

So, I continue to love those I’ve always loved, even if it’s from a distance. And I pray that one day they will remember who they really are and walk away from the hatred and division, and remember that love is their compass, and follow it.

The Price We Pay

Mary Long1 Comment

I understand my posts of late make some of you uncomfortable. I’ve been part of the non-religious spiritual community for many years and am never ashamed to say my relationship with the Divine Source, whatever it is, is the most important thing in my life. I’ve been on this path for a long, long time.

Lately I’ve felt the push back from women who believe politics are ‘low vibration’ and don’t mix with spirituality. With deepest respect, I have some questions for you.

Is your rejection of a spirituality that’s loud and pushes back against oppression rooted in your truth, or are you simply following the traditional programming that trains us to be compliant, good little girls who pray quietly to their God and don’t make any waves? This is not an accusation, but a sincere question.

I know the dilemma this poses, as I’ve wrestled with it myself. I’ve seen the looks of judgment from my sisters who believe in only ‘love and light’ as I become more and more vocal in this political climate. I’ve received their texts and emails saying how they’re praying for me, and I should just hang in there and eventually I’ll ‘get there.’

Most of us agree that this is the time the Divine Feminine is rebirthing herself. I’m wondering if our programming from traditional religions has tainted our view of what a female who is fully embodied in her Divine Feminine power looks like.

Over and over in my religious training, I was programmed with images of religious women who were quiet little helpers, supplicating themselves before the God they were taught to believe in. These were the women God favored and approved of. I can’t think of many historical examples of a woman  who fully embodied her power and roared against those who wished to oppress her, that ended well.  Usually, those women ended up on a bonfire or at the bottom of a lake.

Is it possible these horrors live in our cellular memory? Is it possible that it’s these memories that keep us continuing the cycle of being nice, quiet little girls?

Why do you think it is that one of the first things a tyrannical government does during a takeover is control and silence the women?

Why is it that they are once again proposing bills that would enable them to imprison or execute us if we go against their rules? If we dare to speak out against them or posit that we have dominion over our own bodies?

Why are they so terrified of women unifying and remembering who they really are?

Is it possible that the rebirth of the Divine feminine is so terrifying to the patriarchy that they are doing everything they can to control our bodies and silence our voices?

I know this is uncomfortable. It still is a bit for me, too. But I’ve had too many inexplicable and miraculous experiences to stay quiet. I’m not interested in a spirituality that stays home praying while her brothers and sisters are being targeted and suffering. While the rights that the women who came before me fought so long and hard for are being repealed and negated.

I pose no judgment if your path is a quieter one, but that is not my calling.

If you believe a spiritual life is incompatible with activism, Martin Luther King Jr., Gandhi, Jesus and Malala Yousafzai would like a word.

Can you think of one example from history where the rich and powerful realized the error of their ways and willingly gave that up to give those they were oppressing equal rights and a better life? Those rights many women so easily voted away came from a long line of women who called up their inner warrior goddess and spoke truth to power.

None of us can know what another soul’s purpose is in this life. Maybe some of us were put here to quietly envision a better life. Maybe some of us were put here to find the courage to use our voice and speak out for righteous change.

It’s taken me a long time to find my voice, and it’s taken even longer to rid myself of the need for approval from society and pats on the head from those who wish to keep me compliant and afraid.

When She came to me, She came to me roaring. She came to me breathing fire and refusing to spend one more minute being tolerant of the oppression and abuse of her daughters. She came to me carrying a sword of justice that vowed to end the discrimination of any of her children. She made it clear that love was an action word, and that she was unleashing Herself, in all Her power.

Would you tell me that the version of Her you believe in is more valid than my own personal experience? More valid than what She is telling me within my own heart?

I’m no Joan of Arc, but I now fully understand her decision to be burned at the stake rather than denounce the voice of the Divine that was within her. The voice the men in power over her demanded she deny.

The price of trading outward approval for denying the truth rising within is too high. I did that for too many years.

It’s a price I’m no longer willing to pay.