The dance of joy and pain (Sunday, November 6, 2011)

The dance of joy and pain

Joy and pain lie close within our hearts,
cradled in the arms of everlasting life.
Where we see darkness,
God’s light shines just beyond,
immutable, unchanging, as
the holy darkness of creation is impenetrable
to garish human daylight.

We are a unity of forces complementary
and completing, a sacred consummation
of light and dark. We call them opposites,
but life knows that they do
not oppose, but realize;
and each holds the germ of the other
within its living essence.

So, if we have a choice, we usually choose
the sugar-coated pill of happy, easy times;
but our deeper nature knows
we ought not run from the pain
(though only a fool steers directly into it).

Let us cling to the precipice of our love
emboldened brothers and sisters of all the world,
divine children both of dark and light,
both of joy and of pain.

jbs
5/29/03          1/30/05          11/6/11