Sparkles of Goodness

The best criticism of the bad is the practice of the better: Richard Rohr.

“A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. The Christ in Jesus from the Gospel of John.

For some right now it may seem that there is no path towards the better. On some days and some moments during the day this describes where my spirit resides.

We are witnessing the rise of hate as a political tool like no other time in my life. We are witnessing leaders use dehumanizing language to quench their thirst for more power and ultimately more money. Some of us, me included, feel angry and dismayed about where we are as a nation.

However, Anger is usually a veil that covers over pain. Sometimes that veil can be thick and as hard as a rock. Sometimes that veil can be paper thin and just under the surface lies our vulnerability. Even as a pastor who knows this, anger is usually a cover for pain, it took me a long time to turn that lens inward and spend time with my own pain.

The circumstances of this last decade, listening to the people who have been and continue to be demonized and dehumanized as a political tool, have made me angry as this language that has become all too familiar and sadly all too accepted. This language is landing on the bodies of the LGBTQ plus community, the immigrant community in our country, woman, the poor, children, the black and brown bodies who have historically been oppressed and so on.

Some words have been used to describe this language as racism, sexism, homophobia, misogynistic, nationalism and others. The truth is that these words only describe what is, at its roots, language that describes some to be less than human.  It is disgusting to hear and it is hurtful.

I have decided to spend my time cultivating goodness in the garden of my soul.

As a Christian pastor who follows and learns from the Jesus of history, I believe Jesus is angry and weeping, the heart of God is breaking and Jesus is screaming….Love as you have been loved!

As I turn the spiritual lens inward, I realize that the anger is pain which stems from listening with empathy to the people that this language is aimed at. This ugly language is not located in one political party, it is not located in one nation, and it is not located in one race or sexual orientation or one time and place in history. This language has been part of human history. In our current time we are not standing outside of the human predicament. We are centered inside the human predicament and this language is hurting people that I love. Their very lives and freedoms are being threatened in real ways.

The best criticism of the bad is to do better. Years ago, there was another quote that came from a street artist in St. Louis called Ghetto Monk: we cannot unsee what we have seen, and there must be a better way.

The better way, or the doing of the better, is to spend our time cultivating goodness. This does not mean that in the face of injustice, we should put our heads in the sand or stand on the sidelines as people are dying at the hands of this evil empire of greed and power. This is not simply political rhetoric. It is real human beings of all walks of life expressing the diversity of creation. whose lives are at risk.

In order to sustain our spiritual health so that we can be a beacon of hope and goodness for all to see and witness in us, we must find ways to cultivate goodness. It may feel difficult at times, but if we are ever going to fulfill God’s promise of a beloved community, to live out our vocation as cocreators with the Divine, where everyone is free to live in their own freedom and human thriving, it will take work. It will take the work of all of us for all of us.

Many have been in fight mode for a long time and we are tired. Many have been fighting this their whole life as they walk in this world, facing ridicule, even death, and oppression every day.

Even as these difficulties exist within the human predicament, their exists human creativity, human strength, human flourishing and resilience in the face of violence and persecution. Let us remember Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Óscar Romero, Mahatma Gandhi, Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., John F. Kennedy Jr., and many others who stood firmly on their spiritual grounding of the goodness of God, while calling truth to power and saying no, these dehumanizing policies don’t belong!

In dark times, it can be difficult to see. In dark times, it could feel as if the love and goodness of the world doesn’t exist. To speak of the goodness of the world, we must cultivate the goodness of humanity and creation.

As I think about cultivating goodness, I stand firmly on my own spiritual grounding that the goodness of God/Breath of life/the Great Spirit/the Divine sacred is not controlled by human hands. Goodness is not something that is bestowed upon us by any human institution. Our innate goodness is our original blessing, given freely and it cannot be earned. This means that nothing can take that goodness out of this world, and nothing can take it out of humanity. It is the original blessing of creation itself.

Each of us is a piece of that original blessing no matter the outward physical expression of the inward sacred goodness. It is ours to cultivate in ourselves so that when those loved ones around us and in our community need a reminder of their own innate goodness and beauty, we are the shining reminder of the goodness that is alive and thriving in this world.

Unfortunately our news media, our economy, our social feeds and our politics are not in the business cultivating goodness. This does not mean that people who are in the news media or politics are cultivating evil. What it does mean is that their business is business, and that economic model is not to cultivate goodness.

Our business as children of the Great Creator is to help cultivate the goodness that is alive in us, and in the world. If we want to grow a garden of love and compassion, we will need to refocus the eyes of our heart to look for goodness every day. We are called to tend this garden which is alive in us. We will need to focus on those tiny little moments of goodness that are happening in the world, and in our lives every single day.

Our headlines scream at us and our social feeds that can at times pull us into despair. Maybe we need to be rebooted so that the algorithm feeds us the goodness that is alive in the world.

Again, this does not mean that we simply stick our head in the sand and stand on the sidelines and let injustice trample on humanity. What it does mean is, if we are going to be strengthened to stand up, speak up and speak out, and do something about the injustices that we see we will need to strengthen ourselves with the nourishment of the goodness that is alive in the world.

The other things of life, the difficulties and the injustices, are all too easy to find. But what if that wasn’t the case? What if we retooled and retuned our searching to look for those moments of goodness? What would happen in our spirit and our soul if what we fed ourselves every day was a large dose of goodness as a counterbalance to the injustices. Or a good come along friend as we work to restore humanity’s relationship with the Divine in everyone. I call this honoring the Divine Spark in you as I honor it in myself. This is the Sacred relationship of creation.

For me, I look to the relationships that I have in my life. I hold tight to the memory of the hug that I shared with my wife. I hold tight to the conversation that I just had with my son. I hold tight to the memories of my own childhood, of my family and of my wonderful two boys. I know many people personally who do not have or have grown up with the same economic privilege that I did. I know how blessed I am, and I carry that as a responsibility, not a crown of greatness. I believe, oh how I try, to be there for people who need a touchstone of goodness in their lives. I try to live in gratitude so that I can live in abundance so that I can share abundantly.

These are examples of how we all can cultivate goodness in our lives. Sometimes it will look like finding people who are telling the truth about the ugly inhumane oppression that the empire of greed and power is doing to bodies. It may look like witnessing with others to the atrocities of our human existence and putting our bodies on the line in protest.

Sometimes it may be a poem, or sitting quietly in contemplation and rest, or walk in nature, or phone call to a friend to lament, and be honest about our own pain, or seeing the love shared between two friends.

All this other stuff that is happening in the world can feel like it is overshadowing this goodness. If we look to the night sky and only see the darkness, we miss the twinkling of the stars. If we look out into the world and allow ourselves only to see the ugliness, we will miss the millions and millions of twinkling moments goodness, which is alive within us, all around us.

There is a garden in each of us. A garden of abundance filled with flowers of compassion, sunflowers of yearning, roses of love, lavender of sweetness, stubborn day lilies are all planted in the garden of eternity.

This is the garden of goodness that needs cultivating.

The nourishment that our hearts need is all around us. If only we can see it, if only we can show it.

Let us not stare too long into the darkness so that we cannot see.

Let us look towards the sparkles of goodness twinkling all around us.