June 29, 2024 – B

I was standing in a cotton field
during planting season
with a farmer-member of my congregation
in Batesville, Mississippi
where the hills meet the delta,
in a wide-ranging conversation
dealing with race relations and gay rights
when he said,
"Hell, Jim! This isn't the way I SEE things--
THIS IS THE WAY THINGS ARE!!!
And I said,
"And that's the way you see things!"

We laughed together and went on 
about the business of seeing things
the way we see things.
And doing what can be done
about the way things are.

It is on-going work.
Unchanging.
Never-ending.

Living in light of the way we see things
regardless of how things are.

The way we see things governs
how we live 
and what we do in response to what happens
and what we think needs to happen,
and makes things as they are.

We get our ideas about the way things are
and the way things need to be
from the people we live with 
from birth to death--
but it isn't automatic,
that we see things
the way things are being seen around us.

There is something in us that knows
things aren't what they are said to be.
We have our own way of assessing 
how we are told to think/see.
We can over-ride some things,
perhaps all things,
particularly if we take it into the silence,
and wait there for clarity.

Intuition has something to say about 
the things we hear/see.
"Truth denied is still the truth,"
as the civil rights activists have proclaimed
in all generations.

We can know the truth,
and the truth can set us free
to ask, seek, knock on our own
our entire life long.

Free to be different from those around us.
Free to follow our own sense of direction.
To be who we need to be,
not knowing how we know.

Something knows.
Intuition is a reliable guide,
piloting our boat on its path through the sea.

We would do well to know
what our intuition knows,
and to follow where it leads
with fealty,
liege loyalty,
filial devotion
all our life long.

How are you coming with that?