…corporate evil is often culturally agreed-upon, admired, and deemed necessary, as is normally the case when a country goes to war, spends most of its budget on armaments, admires luxuries over necessities, entertains itself to death, or pollutes its common water and air. — Richard Rohr

Today, for instance,

how can you be German
and not cringe at the Holocaust,

how can you be Scandinavian
and not cringe at the Vikings?

Today, for instance,

pick an ethnicity and cringe.

Today, for instance,

how can you be a white American
and not cringe at slavery, ethnic
cleansing, systemic and endemic
racism, war after war after war,
a budget bulging with armaments,

how can you be a human
and not cringe at what we are
doing to God’s billions of years
in the making Bible — creation,

how can you be a Christian
and not cringe at what Christianity
has done in siding with the
power structures instead of
finding solidarity with the oppressed,

how can you be a Christ-bearer
and not cringe at how we just
keep slapping Jesus upside
the head,

how can you be Judas
and not cringe at how you
sold your soul for thirty
pieces of silver,

how can you be Cain
and not cringe at killing
Abel,

how can you be Adam
and not cringe at how
you blamed Eve and
keep blaming Eve?

Today, for instance…

now that places of worship
erroneously, callously and
cynically have been declared
“essential” in this age of the
virus, how can we not cringe
at the thought of blithely
gathering, praying, singing
while possibly sentencing
each other to illness and
death?

Today, for instance,

how can we not cringe
as we continue to
kill Jesus all the while
Jesus continues to love
us into eternity?

Today, for instance,

how can we simultaneously
cringe and rejoice at love?

Today, for instance,

perhaps it is only in
light of that eternal love
that we can cringe courageously
without losing hope.

*thoughts based on readings
and meditations, 05/24/2020