Distractions

I’m sitting here, musing about this week’s blog, Mumford & Sons is blaring, snow’s falling outside and I’m wondering where this recent accumulation is going to go … in case you’re not from the ‘peg, we’ve got a lot of snow this year … it’s quite lovely and white, powdery and cold, dogs love running around it, but I’m getting a little worried it may actually pile above the clothes line, and what’s the point of this long, run-on sentence … oh yeah distractions …

I know – not a new topic. It’s likely been covered more articulately, intelligently and perhaps even poetically, but it’s an ever-present temptation for people of faith. No matter what hat one wears in the interfaith plurality of a globalised and interconnected planet, it’s there! Distraction: ever-present pulsating in the beat, whispering in the sound-byte, lulling in the palm of a vibrating smartphone, the chore undone, the task attacked, we’ve all got them personally and … corporately.

Culturally I’ve noted a few recently. Regardless of your politics, left, right, centrist leaning, what happens in the United States of America affects the world. What happens there affects lives literally, not merely figuratively. Regardless of what you think of President Obama, gun violence, world violence, starvation or racism, it matters. Of course, what’s the media been focused on? As a social justice orientated person-of-faith, lip syncing would seem … inconsequential, trite, superficial, possibly even distracting?

As I sit here watching the cursor blink its invitation to create, to beckon words from mind to pixelated digitised reality, CBC’s been busy. Wars and refugees cry out. In Syria, mad people make mad decisions as leaders are seized by inertia. Our Canadian government fights itself about releasing its own documents about our corporate choices that have maimed, hurt and alienated our Indigenous Brothers & Sisters. In Mali, human history is destroyed in Timbuktu, one religion is pitted against another and stereotypes invoke demons, colonialism is dressed up in new clothes for the Emperor and what’s our national broadcaster discussing? What investigative report is offered to me – the listener? A new tech toy, a new gadget that really is a must have … and of course it’s Canadian so … well you can finish the rant …

Distractions … this human constructed world can seem dark and over-whelming. The illusion of our distractions is a woven spell tricking eye from light refracted from the mirror. But … and this is a strong use of the conjunction … it’s all a distraction. The violence, the war, the politics … I’m not implying there is not suffering, dis-ease and sorrow … But …

At the core of this serenity that is faith there is something larger, more diverse, ever connected that slows down the manic nature of Pandora with whom we constantly walk. In God, in the embrace of ultimate potential, there is solace, there is Joy. There will always be work, injustice to address, questions to ask and rage to be exhaled righteously, but … you can only do what you can do, but what you do is what you must and what you must is to journey with humility embraced by a Universe that knows you to be Love incarnate.

Distractions, yeah I have ‘em, but what a relief – with deep breath drawn, held and released – to realise they’re a burden, a self-imposed mask from which I can – with intention – disentangle. With scaled eyes now once more sighted, I awake to reality that all is beautifully made and you, Dear Reader, are indeed wonderfully and awesomely made. No matter from where you read this, no matter what occurs after you finish reading this final sentence, you possess the gift to shine and to look into grey clouds, riddled with tempest and lightning and see neither danger, nor distraction, but that you are the consciousness of a reality in which all are One …