Belonging and separation

We know that God is compassionate, loving kindness and all we're asked to do is to be in the world who God is.  In order to make that happen, we create this community of kinship.  Mother Teresa, I think, diagnosed the world's ills correctly when she suggested that the problem in the world is that we've just forgotten that we belong to each other.  So how do we stand against forgetting that?  How do we imagine a circle of compassion and then imagine that nobody is standing outside that circle?  How do we obliterate once and for all the illusion that we're separate, that there's an "us" and a "them"?

Father Gregory Boyle

"Tattoos on the Heart: The Power of Boundless Compassion"

from Calvin College January Series

Moving on...

If any of us were to be asked, do you want to stay here on earth, or would you like to move into a bigger, better, brighter world we would probably answer that, even with earthly anxieties and problems, we would rather stay on earth than move into an uncertain future. But, like the child, we have no choice. At a time, not of our choosing, we make the transition from this world into eternity. From our earthly perspective this moment looks like, loss, parting, separation, it looks and feels like death. But the one who has died is encountering the fullness of God’s life and love, and is being offered this life for eternity.

Fr John O'Connor, on his blog Food for Faith