Left holding the bag...

I find the following quote particularly insightful as more of us wake up to the toxic consequences of political and religious divisions that are based more on convincing others we are right than actually BEING and DOING right in our own lives.

"It is so easy to get engrossed with ideas and slogans and myths that in the end one is left holding the bag, empty with no trace of meaning left in it.  And then the temptation is to yell louder than ever in order to make the meaning be there again by magic.

Gradually you struggle less and less for an idea and more and more for specific people.  The range tends to narrow down, but it gets much more real.  In the end, it is the reality of personal relationships that saves everything."

- Thomas Merton

"Just then a relgious scholar stood up with a question to test Jesus.  "Teacher, what do I need to do to get eternal life?"  

He answered, "What's written in God's Law?  How do you interpret it?"

He said, "That you love the Lord your God with all your passion and prayer and muscle and intelligence - and that you love your neighbor as well as you do yourself."

"Good answer!" said Jesus.  "Do it and you'll live."

- Luke 10: 25 - 28 (The Message)

Selah.

- S.