loving kindness

My heavy hands fall to the wayside, reluctantly lulled to rest by unmerited good. Not getting what I deserve, I am utterly disarmed. I suspect the best technique for loosening a death grip is to go limp in surrender. When there’s no fight-back, I’m left showing only my ruinous self. It becomes a one man horror show, and with that comes my fright as a blazing spotlight. The moment I come to, and realize my dread, is a moment of sky-splitting clarity.

When we find the very thing we are bent on destroying, is loving the strength of pain right out of us, there is little else to do but let go and let it have its triumph. This is what it looks like for love to fight harder and smarter. This is loving kindness: it intercepts brutal blows and disrupts murderous plots; it is the gentle answer that does not return fire. This is a force so superior, it positions itself on its back, with seemingly no leverage, and takes it; it pins itself to a tree, and lets you drain the life blood from it. The confession of a centurion rings as an eerie echo centuries later: surely, this is the son of Love himself.

Had I been shown the same savagery I projected, it would have been senseless bloodshed. There is no redemption in that type of war. It’s often blood we crave as misguided vigilantes. The requirement for justice is never void of this, but it’s only in the white flag bearing of the soul that blood speaks a better narrative. Heaven knew and bled with provision.

That provisional act has apprehended me. It caught me red-handed, and poured its red love all over me instead. I have been both the criminal who hurled insults and indictments, and the criminal who pleaded to be remembered. Mercy woos the guilty heart; loving kindness leads it to the home it meant to burn to the ground. The only cure for my brokenness thus far has been a despicable measure of both, and its selfless acts in loving the hell right out of me. Love wins. It always wins.