YOU ARE ACCEPTED

​YOU ARE ACCEPTED

 
Sometimes at that moment a wave of light breaks into our darkness, and it is as though a voice 
were saying: "You are accepted…”  – Paul Tillich from The Shaking of the Foundations
 
 
There will come a time in your life
When what may be is a path
You must decide upon
Purposely and intuitively
Influenced by both your
Conscious and unconscious mind
One side of this will come from 
What you already know
About yourself, how something
Makes you smile, in a world
That always makes sense
  
The other side will come from
What is sad and broken and
Askew within the world —chaos
Unaware of the self’s unlimited 
Potential, and how your
Thoughts shape everything
The world you live in
Is coming from you
What I can tell you now
From my own experience is to
Not fret or feel threatened
  
Simply be —being itself 
Is the reason you are here
It is the reason for living
Your life is a gift and your
Only obligation within it
Is to live that life fully and let
Everything else unfold graciously
Before your eyes —you do
Not have to question why
You do not need to fear
 
You simply need to accept
That you are accepted in
All that you are and will
Be by something greater
Than yourself —even if
Especially if —it is something
You cannot name now
Do not even try, for
Grace may strike when
Your need is greatest
  
You will name it later and do not
Expect that you will be 
Better than before or 
Believe more than before 
It can happen this way
You can love your life
And be transformed 
by the Ground of Being 
(God if you wish)
The groundlessness and
Openness of all creation
Arising around us all
Being itself —this mystery
 
 
 
 
 
Ron Starbuck © 2018
June 12, 2018
 
 
 
You Are Accepted: Chapter 19, theologian Paul Tillich’s book of sermons entitled The Shaking of the Foundations published by Charles Scribner’s Sons in 1948.

Nirvana–Śūnyatā–Groundlessness–Openness: “Might be imagined as a process, indeed the process itself by which in which and through which everything has its being.” Chapter 1, “Nirvana and God the Transcendent Other” – Without Buddha I Could not be a Christian by theologian Paul F. Knitter.