Vachon Imagined

Hate has gotten a bad reputation over the years.

You can watch that reputation change depending on what is happening in the news. I remember during COVID, when the news of police brutality was at an all-time high, it seemed everyone was talking about getting rid of hate.

As though hate is something we aren’t.

Something we don’t feel.

Something we can’t embody.

But hate is not what you see.

You can’t see hate.

You can only see the effects of it.

You see what hate does. You see what it produces. You see what happens when it moves through a person and becomes words, actions, violence, cruelty, rejection.

But the hate itself remains invisible.

And anytime you put your eyes on the world, you risk being deceived by it. You stop seeing properly. You begin putting things into the world that were already here, while the names you give everything begin running through you.

There is a woman who is not in my presence but lives in my mind, and when I speak about her, I can feel hate brewing.

I feel it in my chest.

I feel it rising through my throat.

I feel it come out of my mouth.

And there it is.

Hate.

We spend so much time looking at the world that we can lose these sensations. We can lose ourselves.

You were given a body to warn you, to feed you, to sustain you.

But when you ignore it, deny it, belittle it, or try to control it without first experiencing it, you begin losing more than your body’s signals.

You begin losing your own voice.

You lose the very body you were given to experience the life flowing through you.

All the time.

Not when you need it.

Not when you want it.

All. The. Time.

Even when you sleep, life is flowing through you.

And you get to experience it.

How blessed you are to experience hate.

How wise you are to let it pass through you without trying to remove it.

Without trying to hate the hate.

Jesus Christ was very clear about hate.

He was very clear about injustice.

He did not tell us to pretend we don’t feel what we feel. He did not ask us to become numb to what is wrong.

He asked us not to lose ourselves.

Give away what you are.

But how can you give away something you aren’t first accountable for?

How can you love what you refuse to know?

How can you transform what you deny?

For what you deny, you cannot understand.

What you reject, you cannot know.

And what you ignore will continue speaking through you.

So let me hold onto my hate.

Not because I want to keep it.

But because I want to know it.

I want to feel where it lives.

I want to listen to what it is telling me.

And then, when it has finished passing through me, I can let it go.

Not because hate is forbidden.

Because nothing in the kingdom of God, the kingdom of the invisible, is forbidden.

What is dangerous is believing that you are the one giving yourself life.

Believing you are the one creating the experience.

Believing you are the one who must control what comes through you.

Life is already moving.

You are already experiencing.

You are already being given.

The question is whether you will be present enough to receive it,

and humbled enough, by yourself and for yourself, to let it go.

And to let it move.