This month’s Soul Matters theme explores Widening the Circle …

 

Is it possible that

being on the inside

leaves you out of the loop?

What if the margins

aren’t narrow?

What if that space of exclusion

is also a position of perspective?

What if being shut out

allows you to understand the insiders

better than they understand themselves?

 

Why do so many seek the safety

of that inner circle anyway?

Don’t we know that the circles

not only keep others out

but also the air?

Haven’t we learned that

it’s on the edge of circles

that hate makes its home?

So even if you weren’t among the ones

who put the circle in place,

by allowing it to linger,

don’t you carry the burden

of responsibility as well?

 

What if who we are

doesn’t end at the barriers

of our own skin?

What if sin is believing

that you can put the puzzle together

with only the pieces that belong to you?

What if heaven is the moment you realize

that none of us can get there alone?

What if the only true freedom

lies in the willingness to

fight against that which imprisons

someone else?

 

And what if these all questions

are a matter of life and death?

Or is it a matter of dying to live?

After all, didn’t the Nazarene say

we must lose our life in order to find it?

Haven’t all the sages said the solitary self

must perish for the larger we to live?

 

If that is true

then let’s widen the circle

until it breaks!

For as long as the circle exists

pieces and parts of ourselves

will always lie on the other side

of the line.

 

So let us push, pull,

twist and tear,

dig underneath

and climb over the top,

do whatever it takes to meet each other

face to face.

And having found each other,

let us stare

and struggle,

fight and forgive,

call in and call out,

until “me” and “you”

dissolves into “us.”

Is there any other way we become whole?

 

— from Soul Matters, adapted for UUFM