Year B - Pentecost +2 or Energy to Witness 2
June 7, 2015
Listen to the people even as you warn them that what you are hearing from them is not in their best interest.
This is a difficult dynamic to try to pull off—honoring folks who are out to harm themselves and others through a short-term decision that forgets about all we know about human realities. If you put someone in charge, they will gladly receive that and make you much less glad in another moment as they take advantage of being in charge. Somehow it goes to their head while bypassing their heart.
Who among our leaders has not disappointed. Even the ones that I have held in high esteem tried to pull some tricks to benefit themselves first.
Indeed it is difficult to hang in there with folks who start as hopeful reformers only to be the very ones who will be glad to throw us under the bus or send us to the moon. Their calculus always seems to end up that it is better that one group or another die.
What is a priest to do? Go back in a time-machine to see if they can grow better kids that people will see are as concerned about them as is Samuel? Well, that’s not going to work. So people are given over to reap the predictable consequences of of idealized decisions. This may be the saddest moment in Samuel’s life.
Identify a key sad time in your life. Odds are that it is a prior decision that brought about the sadness. Our own way of not seeing this is denial of the wisdom available if we are interested or able to attend in the midst of all the pressures in our lives (this includes the pressures we bring to our own life so we can’t just blame someone or something else). May you find comfort in taking your eye back off of some eternal ideal and putting it back on to ordinary life. Here we can know which way the wind will eventually blow even if we don't act accordingly.
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