礼品之路 ( Lǐpǐn zhī lù ) – The Gift of No More Sacrifice

We are not required to sacrifice ourselves.

There are many circumstances in which we are asked to give ourselves as sacrifice.

To sacrifice our convictions, or even our being,  our own dreams, or our family or precious time.

Circumstances in which family, or friends, or parents, or employer, sometimes even employees, look at us with the expectation that we would offer ourselves, that we would commit to doing something or taking on a responsibility,  of which the consequences will remain long into the future, long after the benefit of the sacrifice has dissipated.

To be the offering is certainly noble.

No one can fault anyone for it.

But it is not something which can be required.

Or even demanded.

It is most definitely not something which could ever be given from guilt or duty.

Guilt.

Duty.

Those are not words that could ever be used alongside sacrifice.

Sacrifice is willing.

Done from our own volition.

Fully aware of all the consequences, all that will come from it and all it will cost.

Never with hope of recognition or gratitude.

Sacrifice bears no fruit for the one making it or the one being sacrificed.

It is freely given, with no return in sight.

Our Origin made the sacrifice.

Not a sacrifice.

The sacrifice.

The one sacrifice which makes all other sacrifice mundane.

We should remember that time is limited.

To this space we find ourselves in.

Action from outside of our space, into our space, supercedes our limited time constraints.

The sacrifice of our Origin, is the sacrifice of all time and being.

It comes at a moment in our time, but it exists before time and beyond time.

And it removes the need for sacrifice and the value of sacrifice, from eternity to eternity.

The story is told of a man on a cross.

Religion fixating on a moment on a hill.

Our Origin’s sacrifice is much deeper than that single moment.

It is made in taking on our form.

In limiting.

Into the order They created.

In becoming who we are.

And being who we are.

With all the anguish and all the loss and all the gain, into death.

And into life.

In being rejected.

And misunderstood.

And lonely.

And void of hope.

And seeking for meaning.

In tasting hunger.

And exhaustion.

In being asked, what cannot be given and crying about the inability to be what others hoped.

The sun darkens.

The cloth tears.

Silence reigns.

And you and I and all humanity are free, from before time, into the endless expansion of chronology,  to live from this sacrifice, without sacrifice.

By all means, love.

Be kind and good hearted.

Give.

And provide aid.

Come alongside and hold an umbrella when the rain is too much for another.

Be good.

And patient.

And friendly.

All of this we are enabled to be, because of our Origin’s sacrifice.

But do not be coerced to think you should sacrifice who you are, for any reason.

Their sacrifice, enough.

Complete.

Take responsibility.

Yes.

Most definitely.

Take care of your family.

Take care of your parents, as much as you can and as much as you are allowed.

Love your children.

And your partner.

Love them without fail.

Endlessly.

Love your neighbour.

But love your self.

Love your self enough to see the sacrifice of our Origin and acknowledge it for the immensity it is and the immensity it enables.

And live, without any more sacrifice, in love.

From love.

Their love.

Which becomes your love.

Which transforms us and the entirety of our existence.

There is an order.

A beautifully salvational order.

Into which we become, as we are folded into our mother’s womb and carried into this existence.

We are not our own Origin.

And we are not Saviour.

We are originated.

And we are saved.

And we live, amongst our own.

Each in our place.

Contributing to a tapestry we cannot see.

For we are but a tiny part of a collective which exists from the beginning, into the future which has no end.

Not of our own choice and certainly not by chance.

We are, from Them.

And we are, to them.

And in our living.

Where we find ourselves.

Where we have been brought,  from their sacrifice.

Our living, from Their initiation and Their Offering.

In our living, we are enough, as we become, everything They intended us to be.

Yes.

It is with intention that we were brought into being.

The intention that we may be.

In communion.

In at-one-ment.

With Them.

And through Them.

And so we are.

Even if we do not recognise it.

Our recognition merely enabling.

Us.

To be.

A little easier.

As we understand.

Our role and place.

In an incomprehensible cosmos of Their doing.

A cosmos which is complete, as it is being completed.

As we are.

Complete, while still being completed.

Ever expanding.

Always becoming.

From Them.

And towards Them.

Even Their sacrifice, not complete, in all of it’s completion,  as it is made, while it will be made, as it has been made.

So live.

Where you are.

Happy.

Your being framed by love and peace.

Be.

All you are.

In all your exquisite beauty.

In all the kindness and goodness planted in you from eternity.

Aware.

At peace.

That all of your living has meaning.

As much, as your sacrifice does not.