There is no fear in love,
but perfect love casts out fear;
for fear has to do with punishment,
and whoever fears
has not reached perfection in love.
We love because God first loved us.
-1 John 4:18-19
Seeker,
What frightens you most these days?
The dual drivers,
fear and greed,
motivate so much human activity.
Combined, these controlling forces
in some way bind and blind us all.
And they are most debilitating when disguised or denied.
Even at the heart of so-called “spiritual lives”,
the twin engines are hard at work—
fear of punishment and expectation of reward.
Perhaps the longest, steepest descent
in each life journey is that movement
away from grasping and into giving, out of fear and into forgiving.
As long as we look
for some kind of pay for what we do,
as long as we want
to get something from God
in some kind of exchange,
we are like the merchants.
If you want to be rid
of the commercial spirit,
then by all means
do all you can in the way of good works,
but do so solely for the praise of God.
Live as if you did not exist.
Expect and ask nothing in return….
Only such a person is free and genuine.
-Meister Eckhart
Feasting on a diet of dissatisfaction,
greed leaves us hungry for more,
alert to what might threaten our accumulations.
Transforming fancies into wants,
spinning desires into necessities, turning passion to poison,
greed dizzies and disorients, till we lose balance.
Consider the events of this day alone.
How many actions and reactions
are subtly suggested by greed and massaged by fear?
Christ said,
“Go and give all you have to the poor
and become the servant of all,”
for if you do that,
you’ll become a thousand times richer
because your happiness
won’t be made just of good food,
rich clothes, satisfied vanity, and appeased envy.
Instead it will be built on love,
love multiplied by love without end.
-Fyodor Dostoyevsky
So, how do we break free
from the entanglements of avarice
and the paralysis of paranoia?
Transforming fancies into wants,
spinning desires into necessities, turning passion to poison,
greed dizzies and disorients, till we lose balance.
Consider the events of this day alone.
How many actions and reactions
are subtly suggested by greed and massaged by fear?
Christ said,
“Go and give all you have to the poor
and become the servant of all,”
for if you do that,
you’ll become a thousand times richer
because your happiness
won’t be made just of good food,
rich clothes, satisfied vanity, and appeased envy.
Instead it will be built on love,
In order to face fear
and grapple with greed
we first must dare to unmask them.
Humbly we confess our compulsions—
the drive to acquire, compete or compare,
and the dread-filled doubts that overpower us.
Both water and oil
come from the earth.
And though they are similar
in many ways, they are opposites
in their nature and their purpose.
One extinguishes fire,
the other gives fuel to the fire.
Similarly, the world and its treasures
are creations of God
along with the soul
and its thirst for spiritual truth.
But if we try to quench
the thirst of our soul with the wealth
and pride and honors of this world,
then it is like trying
to extinguish fire with oil.
-Sadhu Sundar Singh
As greed and fear
command and control,
so love loosens and liberates.
Mercy and humility are love perfected.
When invoked and embodied, they unshackle fear
and exorcise the demons of desire.
Perfect love, the act of letting go,
unclenches first the heart,
and then the fist.
I would rather live unlocked,
And more often than not astonished,
Which is possible
If I am willing to surrender
What I already think I know.
-Carrie Newcomer
Forgiving is the hardest,
most potent, most holy
form of giving.
Mercy alone extends the possibility
of a new horizon— a heart unencumbered,
a life liberated, a world turned inside out.
From fear to forgiveness: is this not
the trajectory to wholeness and well-being,
for our war-weary world?
There is no Shalom without forgiving,
no true self-giving
without heartfelt humbling.
May you hold in mercy’s light
those left famished by greed
and traumatized by the terrors of the night.
joe
