As I approach the certainty of mortality, as we all do, I also live in the mysterious forever of uncertainty. I know we humans rarely appreciate uncertainty as one of Love’s most subtle disguises. Mind is terrified of uncertainty and compulsively craves certainty. Would die for certainty. Would murder for certainty. Would take other people’s land for certainty. Would stack a Supreme Court for certainty. Would change judiciary laws for certainty. And can shamelessly mandate itself a new “Chosen People” charged with cleansing every Jew from Israel and ultimately bringing every religion under its divinely ordained wing for their version of unchanging, unchangeable certainty.

Every bit of it is madness, but some far more heinous. Uncertainty is an unresolvable existential reality and as such a spiritual issue. Certainty is unachievable and therefore security can never come by any mind-made belief systems, or force of arms, or accumulation of wealth, or twisting of God’s supposed will.

But some quests for certainty, like those pursued by democratic societies, though often misguided, are far more benign at least in the short term than others. (Global warming is an example of a far-from-benign long-term consequence.) Hamas and its ilk are altogether different. They are the expression of a recurring cancer within the soul of humanity. Cancer is transformation of the body without any natural cohering principle. Biological cancer destroys life and ultimately itself but when we confront it to kill it we find it is woven out of so much that is ourselves and that in trying to destroy it we inevitably damage healthy and essential parts of ourselves. Likewise with spiritual cancer, trying to destroy it we inevitably weaken and sadly kill innocent women, children, elderly, the disabled, and otherwise non-violent civilians. And herein is the grief.

I think that when faced with something so ugly and recurring the question to ask, as my wife frequently reminds: “What is mine to do?” 

Sometimes it is resting in the broken heart and the anguish of helplessness.

Sometimes it is recognizing that many issues defy any simple resolution and that we must embrace the nebulous ambiguity of so much that we see and feel and do.

Sometimes it is caring for dogs made homeless by war. 

Sometimes it is destabilizing populations and unintentionally killing innocent parts of ourselves to try to reach and eradicate the primary disease. For the soldiers who must do this and for those who lead you, my prayer is that you purge revenge and self-righteousness from your hearts. You are an instrument of spiritual chemotherapy, and you must grieve the unmeant damage you will inevitably inflict. But health cannot be restored by killer cells alone, though they be willing to die to save the larger body.

This morning in a vision I saw Israelis, mostly women, defying the authority of their own military counterparts and crossing borders into the territories in which the malignancy festers and from where it launched its brutal assault. They were bearing food and supplies for babies and children.

Viewing this vision, I saw that death might come to these brave souls. It could come “collaterally” by their own forces or be dealt by someone so mutated that it could seem wasteful or foolish to sacrifice one’s own life to the irredeemable. But at the risk of overdoing the metaphor, such souls who are willing to embrace mortality for the wellbeing of others are building the only immunity to spiritual cancer, a healthy Love system that encompasses more than love for me and mine.

Most of us will die in a way that does not evolve our own selfhood, that does not speak to God and say “Today, for Love, I am willing to renounce your most precious gift, this holy life. It is time You understand that Your creation has much to teach You.” 

I think it is time to stop praying to God and start evolving God. God is after all our own construction. So let us evolve our construction. Let us teach God what Love is by our acts. I look at all the faiths and feel that God has become stagnant, and we are stagnant in our supplication, prayer, and praise. And sometimes more so in our non-worship. We don’t want to take responsibility for what we have created. It is ourselves we should be supplicating.

Nothing that happened in this past week is new. It is so tragically old. But only the certainty of our relationship with Love, of wanting for others what we want for ourselves, of being willing to lay down our lives for Love’ sake, will ever make our collective, spiritual body healthy enough to withstand the assault of the evil that ever-flows from diseased mutations of mind’s insatiable craving for certainty and its futile quest for security.

I invite you to join me in a prayer that we each live and die in such a way that we help our God grow to be worthy of His creation.

In service to Love,

Richard