on love for humanity

we are not a cancer upon the earth

i love humanity. i love our messy, organic bodies; i love our minds, split between conscious and unconscious; i love our capacity for sin and error. these things make us free, and give us the capacity for such great love.

we are not a cancer upon the earth. we are an expression of its capacity to reveal God to itself. we are not destined to create hell for ourselves; rather, we have the choice to build the kingdom of heaven - not in some afterlife, but here, in proper human history.

i believe that it is only through negation that birth and transcendence are made possible. it was only through the fall that humanity gained the freedom to choose heaven over hell, and it was only through our separation from God that Christ, the Logos born as a human man, was able to come among us and send the holy Spirit down in his place when he left, so that now, Christ is in all of us. it is only because of the split in our consciousness that we are able to experience the world as subjects; capable of making Real the freedom that we now have. our brokenness, our splitness, our separation, our darkness - those things aren't reasons to despise ourselves or to grieve our presence upon the earth, or to try to reverse our mortality or materiality or createdness. instead, we should understand the responsibility, and honor, we hold to steward all creation toward the kingdom of god; the responsibility to create heaven on this earth. and this responsibility holds in every area of our lives, from our internal spirituality, to our relationships with others, to the way we treat and regard nature and our bodies, to the way we understand and engage with history and politics. this, to me, is what it means to believe that God is love, and certainly what it means to me to call myself a Christian. but these truths run through other religions too; i have seen it in Islam, Buddhism, Judaism, Taoism, new age spirituality, and anywhere you encounter a tradition of mysticism.

i urge you all to reject the cynicism and nihilism of our times, and to try to love humanity and its history for what it is. the more you are able to do this, the more you will find in yourself a genuine love for nature and for God as well, not only for other people. not to mention for yourself! and that love will help carry you forward in your works as well. i love you all, and i am so grateful that you exist, in this place and in this time, in all your singularity, and in all our oneness.

may the Spirit be with you and bring you peace. 💕