a kingdom built of seeds

The indecision of childhood remembered. Do I create myself or am I created? Am I made in the image of what I desire or am I formed from the pieces of past and context and circumstance, family history religion. Environment. Culture.

The myth of the self made wo/man for no one makes themselves only we are made by that from which we come, birthed by lottery into a world of which we have no say.

Our gods are given to us—what choice do we have the millions and billions with no way to see beyond to other faces or ways of being. Is our lot our birth or is there more?

Born into a right and wrong not of our own making only received as truth and reality. Can we know any other?

Is it our task to change others or be changed by them—to enter another world to transform it or instead be transformed by that world we seek to change.

I see a God who came not in power but weakness not to lord it over men but to be under them. And we want only power and power and more power (and to be right) according to our birthright but what is our birthright among the other millions and billions? What right have we to utter the final words of the apocalypse above all other voices? What right have we to speak for a god others know nothing of and to cast final judgment upon a world of which we are ignorant and oblivious?

The first to cry “damnation!” may be the first to be damned. Who are we to know the inner workings of hearts and minds so distant and detached from our own pinhole view of a locality and a nation and a world and a galaxy and a universe of which we know so little?

Attached to politics and ideology—each in our own little kingdom. The deception that there is no way but our own. As if only “I” can see and know and understand what others cannot. “I” am as false as any other; as unknown to myself as any stranger across the street or the world is to me.

I understand. I now understand that I speak only for myself and of the little I see and know and understand and not for a god (or God) nor any other. How am I to know the smallness and the greatness of God in the culture the life the body the mind the heart the soul the spirit of any other.

It is not for us to say.

We never know as much as we believe. 

—

It is only for us to understand the other. To see through their eyes and to walk in their shoes. To not judge them in their context but in humility to enter it. (And perhaps this will lead us to love.) Yes—there is good and there is evil—there is justice and there is injustice—and there is also humility and understanding. And perhaps this will lead us to love.

(What weapon do we hope to use that will not be turned back upon us?)