Growing up
A heartbeat away
From throwing everything away
To be on my own
To be alone.
Sometimes
Being frozen in time--
Not growing up--
Is painful.
Not being a grownup is hurtful
To myself and others around me
Maybe Heaven is only for those
Who are willing to grow up--
To take responsibility
To love God
And to love everybody
As you do yourself--
Even those you don’t want to.
Maybe
God just wants us
To grow up
And stop squabbling
Like little children
In the backseat
“Don’t make me stop this car
and come back there!”
Shaking His head woefully
At the ruckus as we
Refuse to love our brothers
Because they
Have something we want,
Want something of ours,
Took something of ours--
Was faster to call shotgun
Or took the window seat;
Because of the unthinking insults--
Hurting deeply because they know
The tender parts of your dreams--
Exposing the tender parts you hold so dear
To brutal sunlight, where they wither and die--
Killing the tender parts of your heart.
Or because of imagined insults
Derived from the soundtracks playing in our heads.
“He looked at me funny!”
“I don’t care what he did,
You’re responsible for what you do,
Not for what the others around you do,
But only for your own actions.
If he jumped off a cliff,
Would you jump off too?
Stop picking on your brother!”
Or the slight injuries of siblings,
The kick under the table
Or the elbow in the ribs
Meaning “don’t you dare betray me!”
Taking the slightest insults
As a reason to do battle
Although, if truth be told,
You know in your heart
That in a heartbeat,
If someone was beating up on him,
You’d turn around and attack the attacker.
Sometimes I think
We are all still children,
Squabbling
And feeling hurt just as we did as children,
Not seeing that the other hurts too.
Feeling the need to be heard,
Rather than the need to listen,
Feeling the need to be understood,
Rather than to understand,
Feeling the need to be loved,
Rather than to love—*
We throw all the good away
From not being able to see
The other
As a brother
Rather than as the enemy--
We forget who the real enemy is,
And it’s not our brother.
“Therefore, if you are offering your gift at the altar and there remember that your brother or sister has something against you, leave your gift there in front of the altar. First go and be reconciled to them; then come and offer your gift.—Matthew 5:23-24 [NIV]
And why worry about a speck in the eye of a brother when you have a board in your own? Should you say, ‘Friend, let me help you get that speck out of your eye,’ when you can’t even see because of the board in your own? Hypocrite! First get rid of the board. Then you can see to help your brother.—Matthew 7:3-5 [TLB]
Then Peter came to him and asked, “Sir, how often should I forgive a brother who sins against me? Seven times?” “No!” Jesus replied, “seventy times seven!—Matthew 18:21-22 [TLB]
*“Lord, make me an instrument of your peace,
Where there is hatred, let me sow love;
where there is injury, pardon;
where there is doubt, faith;
where there is despair, hope;
where there is darkness, light;
where there is sadness, joy;
O Divine Master,
Grant that I may not so much seek
to be consoled as to console;
to be understood as to understand;
to be loved as to love.
For it is in giving that we receive;
it is in pardoning that we are pardoned;
and it is in dying that we are born to eternal life.”
—The Prayer of St. Francis of Assisi