H,
Life is arranged for us as
valleys and mountain peaks. The aim of the game is to, generally, have more
mountain peaks than valleys. The acquired wisdom is that valleys are for
learning and peaks are for living. This is a useful device in getting on with
things, surviving disasters and trying to forge a life out of the loose
material fate gives you. The problem is that it does not work as a general rule
for all life. The general rule must apply to everyone barring a few exceptions.
The truth of this present reality is that many are born into cycles of poverty
that are as deep as any valley could possibly be. It is not a bumper sticker
that will cure this. An epigram cannot lift a single life from this miry clay
and in the end soundbites are not enough to feed a starving child or heal the broken
or the abused. And we are all along this spectrum of hurts that go deep and
cannot be washed away by positive thinking. We can cover up a deep ravine of
pain in material progress but the spirit will need tending at some point or we
will collapse under the weight of things unexplored and unresolved within our
very souls.

This needless dichotomy between
the material and the spiritual is what the Kingdom comes to address. It is heaven
and earth united, Man-Woman and God face to face and past, present and future
resolved in eternity. It is not about weakness but it takes weakness as the
foundation for uprooting the human experience from ego and re-planting it on
the solid ground of what will forever be. It sounds repetitive because it is
true. It has always been true. There is nothing to add to it.
In our present state, we cry
out every day for signs of progress and for songs of hope. We are either
getting fat on the fantasies (Yeats brilliantly warns us about the consequence
of this: “the heart’s grown brutal from the fare”) or we are getting lean on
unfulfilled promises. There is a promise that will be fulfilled though. Our faith
tells us this yearning will not go on forever. It tells us the material and the
spiritual will merge into one reality that answers all our questions. This is
yearning and hope. This is faith that keeps us moving forward through the dark
nights. And here is love, the answer to every riddle.