The least of these (sometimes that's ourselves)

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

(Taken from One House. Go check out their little corner of Blogopia, and especially the photo of this cool installation).

I love that quote by Rumi. It leads me on in my brain's convoluted fashion to think of this one:

"Everything is permissible for me" - but not everything is beneficial. "Everything is permissible for me" - but I will not be mastered by anything. (1 Cor 6:12).

The issue is not one of black and white right and wrong. Life goes beyond that. Moving beyond narrowly-defined issues of "right and wrong" does not send us out into a field of licence (unless that was already in your heart to do so). It sends us out into a field that is so wide that it is big enough to enable us to begin to love the unlovable. It moves us beyond "us and them" mentalities, out to be able to love even those who are, shock, horror, walking in the dark, whatever that might mean.

It means being free to be able to discern, instead of Bible thump with our own agendas, what God may be saying to us about the people we come across who are in need in some way, and to be able to reach out to them with no prior agendas (even if that agenda is showing to them the love of God - he is capable of doing that without us). It also enables us to see that sometimes, as SaltSister said so eloquently on her post, what people need may not even be spiritual milk. Her analogy to a newborn baby:

They don’t even get milk at first. They get colostrum, which precedes the milk flow. It assists the immune system and acts as a laxative to clear out the digestive tract. It’s sort of a detoxifier. Some people are so messed up that it’s exactly an analogy of what they need before they can receive milk. Detox, droppers, milk — in that order.

Happy Saturday, bloggers.