A Year of Seeing: September 17: “Unleashed”

Unleashed

It feels like something has been unleashed

in our world, something dark and primal

that feeds on fear,

pulling us apart like gravity

dragging down a heavenly body.

Powers and principalities, St. Paul called it.

What has been unleashed has long

seethed within us, since we first sat 

around fires and looked at another

and saw an other to shove down.

Growing like an infection in our soul,

fed by a culture fixated on greed,

a celebrity society obsessed with

those who sparkle most and

scream the loudest with 

nothing to say of substance.

Sirens in our midst who

lure us toward illusion while 

we crash on the rocks and perish.

The ropes that pull us down

are anchored in that place

in our own small self

that nurtures a willful arrogance

and a cultivated ignorance–

perhaps the two demons of our days

that most need exorcising.

Entertainers rise to the top because

bread and circuses have always

been tools to distract and numb

while people cheer themselves 

deeper and deeper into suffering. 

Yet, while these soul shackles

are anchored in that shallowness,

that is not all there is to 

us as a people made in

God’s image–each and all of us together.

We must look back to those 

selfless ones who spoke the truth

about how emptiness and humility are 

the antidote to the poison that plagues us.

We must look here, in this moment,

to name that which must be named

so that the spell may be broken and

The fog lifted to see more clearly..

And we must look just enough ahead

so that we can see the place where

our next step must be planted.

Stuart

9/17/2020