Today while listening to the morning news, I heard an old hymn edging its way between the story on the election and the update on survivors of the hurricane.
I will tell you what it was in a minute, but first I offer you my Op-Ed.
I am not counting on my vote getting the leadership I want us to have. Nor am I counting on getting my views on our responsibility to the suffering of others to prevail.
What I count on and lay down my life for, is the goodness of a Reality larger than politics, economics, global warming, war, and corporate interests. I am putting my support on a Being greater and more graceful than the tiny brains of human beings. My candidate is the invincible Substance of things hoped for, which sees beyond what is, yet dwells in the midst of our chaos and sings in the human heart.
Under my fears I can hear the wondrous freedom song that nothing can separate us from the love of God, not human sin, stupidity, or weakness, not death or life, not angels or rulers, not present things or future things, not powers or height or depth, or any other thing that is created. (Romans 8: 38-39 CEV)
The Holy One dwells as ground beneath our feet in astonishing humility – wiser, brighter, and kinder than we are – who will hold us up and see us through.
In this season of distress, polarities, and uncertainty, I am banking on the hidden connections among our species, those channels of mercy that run deeper than ideologies and seep into the crevices of our vulnerability, which is both our great flaw and our greater glory, penetrating down into the solid rock of compassion, imagination, and strength.
The world does not need our anger, our outrage, our fear, or our grasping need to get others to believe as we do. I believe the world needs our humility and our faith.
For my part I can think of nothing better to offer this little piece of history than these simple gifts of the soul.
Now, here is the hymn which intruded into my morning news:
On Christ the solid Rock I stand,
All other ground is sinking sand;
All other ground is sinking sand.
Edward Mote
The Praying Life 