We are all animals

Clare,
I would love to help you to visit your family. Just let me know what you need.

On Friday I was kayaking and started to sing The Rose by Bette Midler...
Some say love it is a river, that drowns the tender reed...
It was great...and I wasn't quiet about it at all...so sail in your boat and sing solo.

I've been playing with the 'thread' analogy while I am mowing. I first heard of the threads holding us away from our spiritual home from St. John of the Cross, a mystic from the 1200's. And I love that my current reading is reinforcing that notion...to fully unravel the Truth you must examine each of the threads.
Those threads that bind and paralyze...even if they are only thin threads...
shame, self-blame, secrecy, isolation, fear.

As I was driving to Meeting this morning I saw a sign that quoted Abraham Lincoln...to paraphrase it, We cannot create the brotherhood of man until we recognize the power of racism and class-ism.
That made me jump to Lipton's analogy of the next coming of Christ being a pure white Light.
When the Light is passed through a prism it separates into a multitude of colors...
each a component of the whole...creating white.
If you take away any of those colors and pass it backwards through the prism the result will not be pure white...but something less.
We, as a people, (humanity) cannot come together and create the perfect communion if we reject or exclude anyone.
We need to include all, in spite of their differences to us and our values.

We are animals...and yes, we have forgotten that we are animals.
We are programmed by our genes just as any other organism is.
I believe that humans are inherently good...
they are, after all, created in the image of the Creator.
We are all taught differently, depending upon our early experiences...
and by the experiences of our parents and their ancestors.
We carry the past, from generation to generation, by silencing or altering the expression of our genes.
We are taught to react...as you said to hate and kill those we have been told are less than us...
therefore less than human...
and yet they have families at home who have trained them, and hopefully loved them as they live.
We are domesticated as Ruiz says in The Four Agreements...

I have been coming around, full circle to inclusion...
Me Too...
as individuals we suffer in silence...
but "where two or more are gathered"...now that's powerful
If we recognize that we are not the only ones...
if we see similarities...
then we will have to accept others and hopefully love them.

A few years ago I struggled with a very simple lyric...
it was about appreciating those I love and those I don't...
I was trying to use the word "like" in place of love...
but love is about seeing the inner Light and respecting that in each person...
like and liking someone is a choice.
I can love someone and dislike them or their actions.

The rain storm has passed and I have to finish mowing the lawn. I will check in tomorrow morning.

Blessings,
Maggie