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Moving…movements…being moved...moved to act...
What moves you? There’s a lot of passion running around these days, often expressed in extremes that are frightening and dangerous. Certainly, passions pitted against each other create polarities that plague everyone from the family who each want to go to a different movie, to a nation that stands toe to toe, as adversaries.
How can we take passion back from the edge and let it guide us, let it move us, towards that which holds value? And how can we honor that which moves us, without succumbing to the temptation to turn values into battlegrounds?
Let’s start with deepest values and see if holding them, being moved by them and acting on them, might not just keep us sane. Sure, we all disagree on many things, but in our deepest values, is there really a place, in our hearts, minds and actions, for name calling, hostility, rage and worse? Can I vote, at the ballot box and also in my daily life, living the values I believe in, sharing my truths respectfully, taking a stand whenever needed?
At the end of the day… at the end of a life, it is the way we live that defines us. My candidate might or might not have won. But was I true to myself in either case?
With so much chaos, danger and conflict in our world, we can, and perhaps must, become warriors, fighting for the deepest truths. But warriors have a code. Let us not be thugs. Every choice we make: to meditate or take up a noble fight; to march or write; to forcefully name a truth or to forgive; to cry or chant; each is the truth of us. It is who we go to bed with every night and wake up with every morning. If not responding to this deepest Call of Self, we become, at best, passersby in a world of need. At worst, we become part of the problem.
At our best, the very act of honoring our deep soul helps our world, even if just a little.
May all beings know peace and safety. May all beings offer each other those same things.
