Continuing my journey from deconstruction to reconstruction, it's interesting to recognize how I seem to have come full circle on things like giving, leadership, structures, scriptures, and mission... But this time from a different vantage point, recognizing that the “issue” wasn’t the issue per se, but rather the culturally-inherited and significant misunderstanding/misapplications of Love resulting in the often tragic use of power.
So while maybe it seems I have come full circle, like any adventure up a mountain, with its switchbacks, there is a gain of elevation, and with it, a new perspective on those places we have seemingly been before. And to quote T.S. Eliot, “... to arrive where we started. And know the place for the first time.”
We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.
Through the unknown, remembered gate
When the last of earth left to discover
Is that which was the beginning;
At the source of the longest river
The voice of the hidden waterfall
And the children in the apple-tree
Not known, because not looked for
But heard, half-heard, in the stillness
Between two waves of the sea.—T.S. Eliot, from “Little Gidding,” Four Quartets (Gardners Books; Main edition, April 30, 2001) Originally published 1943.”