Voice and Conventions

Missed the conventions

In garden picking spinach

The salad was crisp.

There’s this illusion that it matters more when a certain somebody talks.  So people cling  onto his/her words and either fear or have faith in their effect.  Nothing like a campaign year to perpetuate that magic too, with hundreds of millions of us adhered to a screen, awed by what comes out of the mouths of candidates.

But the myth that their words hold any more power than yours or mine do must not be mistaken for the truth and hence, hold us captive and helpless.  Because verily, how I use and direct my energy, words, and actions does not diminish because all eyes and ears are on someone else.  The vitality is equal.  God sees us equally.  I have peace because of this Gospel truth.

Trust that which edifies, you feel it moving, clearing out the waste deep within.  Spotlight people have said that they are humbly the voice of the voiceless, but that is not humble.  That certainly doesn’t edify, still oppressing the ‘voiceless’ and bringing out their own.  Don’t listen to those who say they have the power to help you.  If they really wanted to help they would acknowledge the power you already have through the Holy Spirit: and that power is sufficient.  Don’t become part of that world that pushes people into the ground, suffocating and crushing, in order to save itself.  You’ve seen that symbolic art and the painful striving—the vanity—of it all.  They want you to forget the truth: that you don’t need them to play middle men or their mediating know-how to survive.  My God, if we the Church could live in that truth!

Photo by Laura Berman

 

© 2016, Amaya Engleking