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I am a pastor and a clinical psychotherapist. My life's passion is defining healthiness from a human perspective and paralleling it to the holiness of God, divine perspective. Shifting perspectives creates a paradigm that is alongside of rather than over and against. The parakalein of God and the paradoxes of humanity are redefined. Humanity is all about winning and yet we are losing ground everywhere. Divinity is all about letting go of the desire to win and the fear of loss. The Divine embraces the world with loving care regardless of anything.

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A Giraffe

Posted by Don Paine

Attempting to communicate a new idea and a new way of being is difficult.

Part of the presentation "Parakalein on Violence" presented the idea that all external violence occurs because of internal fracturing and fragmentation between parts, inside all of us, that want to win and hate to lose.  The dual drive of human nature is the desire to win, conquer or control, and the fear of losing, being conquered or being controlled.  Inner parts often feel that it is a winner take all world so they protect and defend.  The attack defend that is automatic in our human nature takes hurts and pains and translate them into justification to act out in attacking and defending ways.  I must act out and kill you because if I do not you will act out and kill me.  War and disputes are a  projection of the fear of loss and the desire for gain.

There is also inside all of us the "image of God".  We can nurture the nature of humanity or the nature of God within.  Jesus said the "kingdom of God is within you".  What is the divine nature? First, it is the willingness to suffer (The I am cannot lose) loss and not defend oneself as a loser but as someone so internally secure that we do not have to prove or win external approval or fear disapproval. Second it is the sereneness of Self (The I am who is I am, need not gain) that is unthreatened by loss and unreduced by power and gain.

So the idea of "going inside" and identifying not justification for action, hatred, attacking, or defending but identifying the serene and sacrificing capacity that retains a "loving compassionate presence and a peaceful calm presence" that transforms inner hurt and pain into a way of caring for that hurt and pain.  The way to speak for the hurt and pain, to refuse to be overwhelmed by hurt and pain as a way of justifying violence, and to present hurt and pain in a healed way that does not condone the aggression but transforms the aggression to the assimilation of validation and valuation vs victimization or villanization.

To summarize I presented the anagram of Giraffe.
Go
Inside
Redeem (make what is inside encounter the peace and love that welcomes all things of humanself and transform that thing thru the nurturance of divine Self)
All
Frustrations
Fragmentations
Energizing (positive inclusion and transforming grace that neither condemns or condones but brings compassion to and form all) 

"If you could know the inner hurt and pain of your most ardent enemy it would be enough to disarm all your hostilities and grant peace to all"    Ralph Waldo Emerson

So go inside identify the thing you hate. Identify and accept the thing that triggers your angry and aggressive part and invite that part to let go of the venom and vengeance that mirrors and reflects the hurt as justification for judgment.

There is no such thing as a just war or holy war.  We can justify war and aggression but such justification perpetuates violence and precursors peace.  In any aggression no one really wins and everyone loses innocent life and that is never just.

The giraffe has a long neck and sticks it out for peace.



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