A wise man,
after studying the peacefulness of Gandhi,
once wrote:
“lying is the mother of violence.” *
This morning
as my eyes observed that thought
the breath in my lungs
vanished
and every lie I ever told
to another
and
to myself
flooded in to fill the space –
suffocating violently
in a lifetime of
rationalization
obfuscation
deceitfulness
and
fake smiles
my heart understood clearly
there is only me to be saved from
and there is only Truth who can save me.
*Thomas Merton in Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1966)
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