2020 showed us on billboard scale that "the worn paths of accepted success" are no longer viable, and we must find new paths. The path I want to challenge today is the Trump-incited path of fear and anger. Once again I have been gifted with the perfect words to use, from Henri Nouwen:
| Freedom Is Our Goal |
| While fear and anger are the most natural and most obvious reactions to a state of emergency, they have to be unmasked as expressions of our false selves. When we are trembling with fear or seething with anger, we have sold ourselves to the world or to a false god. Fear and anger take our freedom away and make us victims of the strong seductions of our world. Fear, as well as anger, when we look at them in solitude and quiet, reveal to us how deeply our sense of worth is dependent either on our success in the world or on the opinions of others. We suddenly realize that we have become what we do or what others think of us. |
Living in fear and anger is letting the "others" win, letting the source live in our heads rent-free. That is not the path I care to take.
Leta
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