Should?

The world is as it is, not as it should be. Therein lies all our conflict.

Now just suppose the reverse were true. Suppose the world were not as it is, but as it should be. Where would the should come from? Your book or mine? The Muslim should or the Jewish should? The Catholic, Protestant or Agnostic should? The Liberal or Conservative should? Would you really want to live in that world? Would you want to be a cog in such an infernal machine, forced to submit to the law and order of the should, even if it is your own?

To enact its unambiguous command, the should must rob us of free-will. O yes, the should might give us a little time to squirm and pretend to be free: a test of faith perhaps. But eventually the should must pull everything tightly together in pristine conformity to its absolute decree. And whoever will not forfeit her freedom is cast like refuse into the fire. No one is permitted to remain outside the dominion of the should. I ask you, which would be more like hell? To burn in that fire, or to live in the perfection of the should?

Hell is the tyranny of the should.

Then how shall we act? Without a should to motivate us, how shall we change the world for the better?

Perhaps it is time for a new kind of action: action that does not arise from the should. Call it wu wei, the flow of the Tao. Or like the Bhagavad Gita, call it action in harmony with stillness. Call it, in Christian terms, mere grace.

When I am hurting, I don't need your should, I need your presence.

Acts of graceful presence are acts of giving, not perfecting, acts of blessing, not busyness. A contented heart feels no need to fix the world: it simply overflows. Grace spills from centeredness, not from a sense of lack. Your grace enfolds my fallen-ness, just as I am.

Have the courage to act like the dawn - a quiet blossoming of inner light, not a re-action to darkness. Cradle the whole earth as she cradles you.

When the peony blossoms, should it? When the mist dissolves, should it? When the sea breaks upon the sand, when the new fir roots in the nurse-log, when the robin awakens you at dawn with a song, should it?