Praise Mama. Grok Earth. Thou art Goddess.
One of the more common readings which you will hear in a Unitarian Universalist service is the “Litany of Atonement” by Reverend Robert Eller-Isaacs. It is an acknowledgement of the ways that we have fallen short of our ideals and an invitation to start again. I have always loved this litany. However, recently, I have started to feel like it is incomplete.
Continue reading “A Litany of Avoidance: Rethinking Conflict”
This morning, I knelt down in the snow
in my favorite place to pray,
a little garden off the side of my porch,
now bare and stark,
where My Lady of Tears keeps her vigil.
And these were the words which came
to me like a prayer … or an answer to one:
You wanted justice, but there isn’t any.
There’s the world.
Cry for justice, and the stars
will stare until your eyes
sting.
Weep, and enormous winds
will thrash the water.
Cry in your sleep for your lost children, and snow
will fall … snow will fall.
You wanted justice, but there is none … only love.
God does not love. God is.
But we do. We love.
That’s the wonder.*
Wise words, I think, for one contemplating the end
of his world.
*paraphrased from Archibald MacLeish’s play, “J.B.”, a modern retelling of the story of Job
My seasonal allergies mean that at those times of the year I most want to be surrounded by nature, it is difficult, and sometimes impossible, to do so. This irony is a metaphor for an essential conflict at the core of my psyche, between the desire for communion with nature on the one hand and the desire to transcend nature on the other.
The Allergic Pagan 