“Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing,
there is a field. I’ll meet you there.
When the soul lies down in that grass,
the world is too full to talk about.”
– Rumi
The injustices and crises in every part of the world raise questions about good and evil. “Where do the weeds come from? Where does evil originate? How can people be so malicious, so unkind, so uncaring? We grew up trying to correct our faults, but since we could not get rid of them all, we covered them up and pretended we did not have them.
Yet Jesus shows us an absolute realism and said “Let the weeds and the wheat both grow together.” (Matthew 13:30) Everything is a mixed bag, a combination of good and bad. We have to learn, even now, to accept and forgive this mixed bag of reality in ourselves and in everybody else.
Accepting this teaching does not mean, “It’s okay to be selfish, violent, and evil.” It simply means that we are not perfect. Our countries, even the Church is not perfect. Learning to love is quite simply learning to accept this. If we really love others, we have to learn to accept them in spite of their faults. Let growing in love teach us to say, “I know your faults, I see your weeds, and I care for you anyway.” Only God’s heart, only the mind of Christ in us, really and fully knows how to do that.
Matthew 5:45 “In that way, you will be acting as true children of your Father in heaven. For he gives his sunlight to both the evil and the good, and he sends rain on the just and the unjust alike.”
