My boy. Shadows and light.
I was talking to the boy from the township whom I help raise the other day and it taught me more about the power of God than reading books about spirituality ever did, or maybe those very books about spirituality made me have that conversation? Who knows? God?
Me: So you believe in God?
My Boy: Yes!
Me: So how does God work?
My Boy: Well, he didn’t help my mommy the other day when she had a toothache.
Me: But maybe God doesn’t do that. Maybe God just gave us power. Your mom needed to go to the dentist or doctor. How do you feel when people treat you good?
My Boy: Nice.
Me: And how do you feel when you treat people good?
My Boy: Nice.
Me: So maybe that’s the power of God? To love. If we all do that, we’re all happy.
We had this conversation when we were busy making paper dragons and whilst it wasn’t quite as straightforward as retold here, it made me realize how simple it all is. I don’t know what God is, if God is, how God is... but I do know that love is the only thing that ever worked to create a life we all enjoy.
That’s not to say it’s easy. We all have scars from experiences that were far from divine. Working in the township and raising kids with behavioral issues I know what it feels like to have hurt thrown at you from every possible angle. I know from my own experiences in life how much chaos and pain the lack, or perceived lack of love, causes. I know when I walk into a business, a friendship, or a relationship, I have scars. I think in the bible they’re referred to as sin; in other religions as the opposing force; the yin and yang; the good and evil. And we will act out those scars. If we think we’re bad we’ll kick and scream when people are good to us, because we feel we don’t deserve it. When they’re bad to us we’ll say: “See, see, that’s what people are like, that’s why I don’t like this life.” It’s hard to find people and situations that love us just enough to keep us happy and act up just enough to prove our thoughts about life, ourselves and people to be true. Most of the time we provoke them to act as we subconsciously want them to.
Whatever you may call them - these two opposing forces - we all sit on the divine power of what I choose to call love. We have a choice, once we step beyond our thoughts and feelings, to execute that power every single hour of the day. When we are sad, hurt, angry...think life is pain, there is no way out of the dead end street we just walked into...we can choose to go against our every desire to cause more pain. We can choose to love ourselves and everyone around us, as well as life itself, in that moment. We won’t feel like it, but we can choose it. And the more we do, the more life changes.
Maybe we’re all divine; we’ve just forgotten how to execute our divine power of love.
I work with littleangelsincapetown.wordpress.com to help get kids the education and love they deserve.