And Now I Open My Mouth

I ended my first post in this blog with the words of Seng-tsan, the Third Zen Patriarch,  "The moment you open your mouth, you are wrong." I think he was right when he said that. But then you must remember that he opened his mouth to say it.

It's always that way. Take, for example, when Pope Francis opened his mouth about the great wall proposed by Mr. Trump along the border between the United States and Mexico. If we look at that through the eyes of boundless love, we see what an unloving proposal it is. Here we are in a land of so much food that we throw away enough every week to feed most of the world (or so I read somewhere, though I never understood how that calculation was done). Even if that calculation is an indulgence in hyperbole, I have no doubt that it points to a truth -- people are trying to get across the border even though it is a life-threatening thing to do because they are desperate. They are hungry.  If they can't get across themselves, they will at least try to get their children across.

Now St. John (or whoever the Biblical writer was who called himself or herself "the elder") says in 1 Jn. 3, "If we have this world's goods and we see our brother in need and yet we close our hearts against him,  how can we say that the love of God abides in us? "  Jesus said (Mt:10) that not even a sparrow falls to the ground without the knowledge of the Father. So we can be sure that the cries of little children who are hungry must also be heard, wouldn't you say? Jesus also said (Mt. 25), "Inasmuch as you have done it unto one of the least of these my brothers, you have done it unto me." I would say hungry people in Mexico are definitely included, wouldn't you?

So the Pope seems on solid ground to me when he simply points out that it is not Christian to "only think about building walls and not building bridges."  But remember: the Pope had to open his mouth to say that.

One thing seems clear: "Something there is that doesn't love a wall." Mr. Frost never opened his mouth to say what that something is, but I myself vote for the Force. Even so, there is that Dark Side, you know. I mean we all feel walls are necessary sometimes, don't we?  When my partner Danny and I bought the house we live in now, it had never had locks on it. It was built in 1913 and people had been living in it for almost a century, and it was impossible to lock it up when you went to bed at night! Oh my God! Here we are in central Texas -- that's where the Texas Chain Saw Massacre happened -- well, that's where it was filmed anyway, I don't think it really happened anywhere. (Did it???) In any case, we wasted no time in getting locks installed. Lots of locks. And I have to say, I don't think that was an un-Christian thing to do.

Damn! This gets complicated, doesn't it? Actually, I think not. The only thing that gets complicated is talking about it. The moment you open your mouth you are wrong. But if we close our mouths and open our hearts to boundless, unconditional love, we will know instantly when to put locks on the doors and when not to build a wall. It's not really that complicated at all.