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Reflections on InPower

The InPower International Youth Conference was held in Spring Valley, NY, this past June. 

The weeks following an event can feel either like I’m soaring, mourning or some combination of the two. I experienced neither after InPower. I have felt in myself and those friends around me, a serenity, calm strength and joy. The conference seems to reverberate in the way the world appears to me now. The possibility of approaching our lives out of hope and confidence has left the trees shining and the future possible. A group of people can take something on in a week spent with one another, and this particular group of 80 fresh and earnest people took responsibility for something much larger than their own lives. The capacities bursting from each room we inhabited promised that we are as brave as the world needs us to be. Feeling supported by those next to us, led by those in front of us, and nudged by those behind us, we found ways to discover something new within ourselves – maybe something scary and needing of attention. An ability to face ourselves clearly and with love enabled the possibility to approach the world’s struggles with an equal clarity and abounding love. We desired an introduction to moral development in order to accomplish transformational work in the world. We honestly tried to do that, and we watched it happen. I believe we created something we could call goodness, within us and around us.

Written by Abigail Dancey, one of the conference organizers.

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Sunday’s Massacre and Bringing the Kingdom of Heaven to Life

The caterpillar becomes the butterfly, Jesus becomes the Risen Christ, that which is bound to earth transforms so that it can live in the heavens. And yet, as Jesus must go through suffering to become new, the butterfly must awaken out of the pain of the cocoon. 

Each human heart is also a cocoon meant to become a butterfly in us, meant to become something heavenly in us. For the Christ in us is not something that is simply there, something static. The Christ in us must be awakened again and again out of the painful cocoon of our hearts. 

For pain rules this world. Is this not so? All around us there is more and more hate, anger, egotism; unbelievable acts of violence and deception. We just have to think of Columbine, Universal surveillance, economic hit men or yesterday’s tragic massacre in Gaza, and we can see, evil holds sway in this world.

But there is another world, a heavenly world, to which our hearts belong.

But this other world, which is called The kingdom of heaven, is not an afterlife reward for those who follow the rules; The kingdom of heaven is here, with us, intertwined with this evil, intertwined with the world of power and pain. They live together, because evil is the hard cocoon of His kingdom which we must bring to life if we are to see its wings.

The kingdom of heaven is brought to life when a Palestinian father whose daughters are murdered breaks through the cocoon of his hate and pain and forgives.

The kingdom of heaven is brought to life when an Israeli breaks through the mental cocoon-like prison that killing is justified if it is defensive and is transformed through deep compassion for the oppressed.  

The kingdom of heaven is brought to life when the slave finds a new strength and freedom in and through the cocoon of his oppressive suffering.

The kingdom of heaven is brought to life whenever human souls use their suffering and pain as a cocoon to become more loving, more compassionate, grace-filled. 

For the Christ in you is powerless love born from a wound.

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