What's Next? 20

I really feel that something new is about to open up.  For many of us, yes, but also for me.  I can't identify it, only that I have to keep practicing the lessons that I have been learning since when I was in Colombia last February.  The main thing is staying open and vulnerable and completely honest towards God and towards other people.  And out of that authenticity and integrity to really walk in love towards others. 

Not always easy, but necessary.  Oh, so necessary.  Sometimes I will go through an entire day feeling absolutely nothing that resembles love towards anyone.  It is during those times that, with the help of the light of the Holy Spirit, that I try to identify thoughts and attitudes (and they are many) that are not loving.  For example, when I automatically start judging a smoker as a self-centred loser, or a cyclist or skateboarder on the sidewalk as a selfish bit of DNA.

Increasingly, I find myself intentionally asking why about others, and what, and how.  It is that essential line from the Prayer of St. Francis, to not be understood so much as to understand.  This is so difficult because we are naturally self-centred and narcissistic, though not entirely so.  It is a matter of summoning the love, or even the faintest whisper of the hope of love that resides in us still.  This is often hard work, but nothing that is worth having can be obtained cheaply.

I am thinking for example of the man reading a book while standing in line on the sidewalk just outside the window and right next to where I was seated on the other side of the window inside a cafe.  He was waiting in line to get into the shop next door, and was standing less than one metre away from me, divided only by the open window between us.  Then I realized what an exercise in  futility it would be to remind him that we are in a pandemic right now.  So, I moved to a table in the back.  He did give me a friendly smile when he caught me looking at him, and probably is a very decent sort, if rather dense and ignorant. 

But really, Gentle Reader, I don't know, and I have no way of knowing anything at all about that gentleman's life.  So, to avoid conflict, I simply got out of the way.  It can be a huge challenge at times staying safe in this pandemic, since it is from ignorant and oblivious people that the virus can spread most easily.  But treating them like the enemy is not the way of love, neither is living in a state of fear and anxious dread of the virus.  So, I simply keep praying and keep opening myself to the Holy Spirit and to the divine teaching if only to keep from falling into fear, hate and neurotic anxious resentment of others.  Better than nothing, I guess.