Overcome with Good

I'd like to write about healing: healing our thoughts, our habits, our perceptions and our society. When I was in college I took a social psychology course where we learned about how our identity is formed by what is nearest to us in our microsystem then branching out to what is furthest from us in our macrosystem, it was called "Bronfenbrener's ecological theory". The concept, in a nutshell, is that the further something is from us the less it affects us personally. How much further from the truth has this been in recent weeks.

These mini mushrooms are so beautiful so close.

Our perception of safety has been shaken in the past few months like never before demonstrating that any control we thought we had in life, any organization or plans, are a mere illusion. It can all be wiped out by a plague from something we cannot see. Weeks of being hunkered down and exploring new options of reality much like pioneers and cavemen, we have lived. Our immediate world was invaded by the danger of death through this awful virus. Now death has reappeared in an ugly historical wound that hasn't been healed: racially motivated murder. Our immediate world violated in a way that is sadly all too familiar but we cannot turn a blind eye. It hurts, and avoiding pain creates a void in healing. Wounds that are not tended to get infections and spread. How can we move forward? 

I can't pretend to know the right answers, but that isn't an excuse to not think about it. The steps towards change begin in our head, in our thoughts. I have total faith that Jesus taught us how to live, He came down to give us a roadmap letting us know where to turn left and right. He isn't a political statement, He isn't a right wing or left wing, Jesus is love, He said so Himself. Sacred scripture states, "Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good." Romans 12:21. 

Overcome with good. Reaching up beyond where we are told to reach. This tall grass "should" have been cut weeks ago. But it kept growing, it overcame.

Overcome by evil....a squashed frog, yet beautiful in it's own right for the life he had. Where was he going, what was he thinking before he was overcome?
About what I feel like after focusing and being absorbed by a sensory overload of the news and opinions bathed in pain and anger.

Overcome. Overcome. I feel overcome. When I watch the news at length: overcome. When I scroll and scroll: overcome. Flowers cannot grow if they are stepped on. We cannot grow if we are overcome. What needs to heal? Our thoughts need healing. Our patterns of thoughts of others, of ourselves. Jesus told us to love one another as he loved us. His love was patient, kind, wise and generous of heart. If we are to try to overcome evil with good, how can we do that? How can we express good in our thoughts and hearts to overcome any evil from growing? We need to be pure in speech, pure in thoughts and generous in compassion. 

We need to be the healing that society needs so desperately, but the healing needs to start within. Bitterness, resentment and hatred we have carried or that springs up needs to be rooted out. Overcome with good. Overcome with good makes me think of a gentle wave that washes patiently onto the beach shore, making the sand create new waves with time. Nature teaches us so much, when the waves wash and wash on the seashore, the motion of the sand changes. We can do the same with love, we can overcome with good. Looking into the eyes of our brothers and sisters and seeing their good, their pain and loving them where they are.

Different than me but sharing our existence. We all belong to each other.

My road to healing has been unique as I too, have experienced racially targeted hate, bitterness and exclusion. Expressions have been the range from verbal attacks by a stranger at a grocery store to deafening silence or over-talking as if my voice didn't exist. Grandparents on both sides have been through incredibly horrific experiences of racial hatred in the 1940's. 

Magnolia blooms are tiny and fuzzy before they bloom. Those that don't bloom become hard and brittle, eventually becoming empty and falling dead to the ground.

Each story of pain is unique as is each path of healing. But healing must begin. We must be the good, the overcoming good, the unbelievable good in the world that gives the overcoming evil no space to breathe. We must shed love where there is hatred, and open our minds to good when we are overcome with the suffocation of evil. The mindblowing concept of an ocean of love for each of us is what Jesus offers us to offer others. Let us be the waves of that love and leave the mark of goodness where there was pain. Let us reach out of our microcosim by reaching in first and asking hard questions. Perhaps even put your phone aside and go there. Go there: do I hate? Do I push others for being different than me aside? Write it out, and confess it. Take it to a priest and confess it. Get cleared through absolution and start fresh. We all can get a fresh start, a pure start in rooting out the evil then overflowing that with good and pushing the good out. Never confessed? There is no better time than the present to try something new, something incredibly good and incredibly worth it. Any priest will be thrilled to hear a first time confession.

In conclusion, let's start the healing by looking in, pushing away distractions and voices (phone aside) and beginning to push love out into the world in our thoughts, in our words at home, in our actions alone and in company. 

When mangos are together, they cuddle naturally.