Is it me or does there seem to be more anger, racism, prejudice and fear in the country as of late? It makes me wonder why. Where did this come from? Maybe it’s the media. The media thrives on inciting rage. Maybe it’s social media. The ability to share, with one click, anything that moves us (and anger moves us!). I think it has always been there. It is simply becoming more visible. And THAT is a good thing!
Several weeks ago I decided to go to the Spiritual Center to clean the carpet. The accumulation of spill stains inspired me to take a few hours out of my day. I just couldn’t look at them anymore J. I recall feeling frustration that people would just spill on the carpet and, apparently, do nothing to clean it up!
As I was cleaning and emptying the dirty, muddy, water buckets one after the other, it occurred to me that there was WAY more dirt in these buckets to have only come from the visible spills. The carpet was down-right filthy all over! I know that carpeting will last longer if you keep it clean so I took a moment to be grateful for the people that spilled. Without the spill spots I likely would not have been there cleaning the carpet!
What does this have to do with anger, racism, prejudice and fear? I see these things as dirt in the carpet. It is important that when these things exist that they are visible. If I can’t see it I won’t be inspired to clean it up. So HOW do we give our country’s consciousness a good cleaning? Well you can’t clean the carpet by throwing more dirt on it. Yes, seeing these behaviors might make our blood boil, yet, if we simply throw more anger at it, it accomplishes nothing. Actually, it makes it worse. Consider taking a moment to be grateful for the visible stains in the carpet/consciousness. They are showing us an opportunity to perform a really deep cleaning.
Here at Unity we know and understand that the only thing we have control over is how we react to any given circumstance. We can react by throwing more dirt on an ugly situation or we can bring out the soap and water. The soap and water are cleansing materials. They are the love and good that exists in each of us and that happens every day in the world. I want to be THAT.
It only took a few hours, several gallons of water and a couple cups of soap to clean up two years’ worth of dirt. WE can clean up our country’s dirty carpet, years of it, with our own clean soap and water/love and goodness. In fact, it’s the only way to do it. Who’s with me? – Mary Loughman
