Dear Friends,

I have always said that things, often times, have to get worse before they get better. Balance and equilibrium are often the result of unrest, chaos, and destruction. “The World weaves as the world wills.” This is a quote from the series “The Wheel of Time” that I am currently reading and finishing up. But then I wonder. How bad does it need to get? How many lives will be affected and how many destroyed. I have kept quiet for a long time using only the Gospel and Jesus to influence people in their thinking, because the core for us and all God’s creation and how we live, lies there. But, as some of my colleagues and friends have noted, it doesn’t seem to be enough. With all of the ongoing violence, lives lost in so many ways, I am becoming more and more despairing and more and more angry at actions taken out of anger and fear that only destroy. When will it balance out? Will it balance out? What is wrong with us that we can accept certain things in life that have nothing to do with our survival, nothing to do with our relationship to God, and Jesus, nothing to do with love and mercy? What are we fearing? What are we justifying and what are we missing? I am perplexed beyond words and I despair. I am angry at the lives lost (not just to death) but to the living losing family and livelihoods. l am perplexed and angry at the smallness of our thinking and acting.

We have been given so much from God, life, the ability to think for ourselves, freedom, free will, the beauty of creation, relationships with all of this, and more. Yet, we squander what we have. We make issues where there are none, we takes sides rather than work to find that common ground we all share. What is wrong with us? We make the same mistakes over and over and we have done so throughout history. I believe wholeheartedly in the Gospel of Jesus Christ but in order to say this I must understand it and live it. The Gospel is not just words to be manipulated or used to my or our benefit. They are there to be absorbed into our very beings. They are there to give us hope. They are there so that I can understand you, and you, me. I wear them, I digest them, I try my hardest to be them. If more of us gave ourselves over to God in this way and more of us got away from our own wants and out of our own heads, and set the influencing which we are inundated with up against the Gospel, to see what does not fit the Gospel, we could more quickly find this balance that I believe will come – maybe sooner and before more lives are lost. I hope!

Remember (from last week’s Epistle from Paul to the Romans) hope never disappoints. Hope motivates us to speak out. Proclaim the Gospel!

Blessings and love,
Mother Lily