Broken

Broken is not a bad word.

Most, if not all, things in our universe must first break to be useful.

When we break away from the story, we reflect on the world and our place in it, and we can then come to terms with the truth of life.

We become an instrument of the power of love.

Do you live behind a wall of your creation, and did you have help building it?

All the isms out there in our world purposely put up rigid walls to keep people locked up.

The isms fill minds with half-truths and goad followers to attack and deny all others as false.

Have you ever heard anyone say you can't trust so and so because they are ________ fill in the blank?

Compassion, honor, duty, and truth all fall away in favor of the prejudice and the advocacy of the given ism.

The ism feeds the personal prejudice of the individual of the group to keep its followers from straying.

But more importantly, it feeds the need to maintain power and position that the followers of the ism are afraid they will lose if they don't fight back.

But what happens if you let your narrative of how you believe the world works fall away?

What happens if your world breaks?

Think about this sentence: billions of years ago, a star exploded, creating the elements you are made of.

Just reading that sentence could break a worldview.

Only in the supernovae of a star, a star large enough that when it reaches its end of days, it collapses on itself, forcing together atoms.

These atoms that are broken and reforged in the massive explosion constitute the elements we find in our solar system.

Think about it.

A Sun in the past had to die to give life to us today.

That is the truth.

You don't have to accept it as the truth.

However, the universe doesn't accept your personal story.

The universe neither accepts our sense of morality nor asks for our permission to do the things it does.

The universe is.

It is up to each of us to discover it.

Discover its truth.

When we break from prejudice and see the world as it is and not how we pretend it is, the distance between you and the next person is just an arm's length away.

We all like to think of ourselves as being unique and special.

Unique, yes, on the outside, but in the heart, we are all the same.

Fear keeps us from doing what we are intended to do with our lives.

Once broken, we can hear the call of love.

Once broken, we can see the need for love.

Once broken, we can reach out to the world with compassion for the first time.

Break the walls of the ism.

No matter how small a person may believe they are, love will give them both strength and courage to make a difference in this world.

A young woman named Rosa Parks made a difference that day when she defied the Jim Crow laws, which were unjust.

The unnamed people who march in our streets against the immigration policy of this president have moved the conscience of a nation.

The Parkland students, the parents of Sandy Hook, have moved others to stand against the ism of the merchants of death.

That person you saw who dropped a coin into a bucket made a difference in the world that day.

It's ironic that the smallest, what seems to be ineffective, the broken, are precisely the type of people who love to change the world.

Our world is broken.

Some of us have been tasked by love to bring the pieces back together again.

To heal.

To bring back hope.

The world will not be the same as it was.

The world will be better.

Peace.

Daniel J Frey aka Toby