The Mission

"We are swimming with the snakes at the bottom of the well. So silent and peaceful in the darkness where we fell. But we are not snakes and what's more we never will be and if we stay swimming here forever we will, never be free. I heard them ringing the bells in Heaven and Hell. They got a secret they're getting ready to tell. It's falling from the skies, it's calling from the graves. Open your eyes, I think we are safe. Let's take a walk on the bridge, right over this mess. Don't need to tell me a thing, we've already confessed and I raised my voice to the air..... and we were blessed." Words by the incomparable Singer Songwriter Patty Griffin.
 We carried our hearts right to the snakes in the well and we stay swimming with those in need that cannot stay afloat alone. Whether the snakes be poverty, oppression or abuse. Carrying a mission is not just being supportive and saying "Oh those poor souls...how terrible!"  It isn't sharing posts and giving comment. It isn't sending money to receive a t-shirt or coffee mug. All those things support the work, but they are not the Mission itself.
One is born to carry forth a mission. One is called to the front line and no matter what stands in the way, it will be done. The key word is 'Will". The greatest joy of a mission? Giving that single moment to another human being, you being the human doing, that gives relief from the trauma that rings like a bell in their very souls that are in a constant cadence of pain. For that one moment in time, free of the bondage that holds them, choking the very beat of their hearts, trying to steal the very human-ness they have.
A mission is forever, there is no end to it. It is only carried forth from one heart to another that hears the calling sent by the unknown force that breathes life in all of us. Beyond empathy, beyond care, beyond love. It is the tendons that hold those things together from the heart that created all. It is a reaching in to oneself and denying that which makes you comfortable, safe, warm. It is an ache that cannot be relieved by anything other than a giving of a piece of your heart to be replaced by a need to keep going and climbing the mountain of oppression of another soul. We Care for Humanity is a mission. A mission of Love, of compassion, of swimming in the well with those that are drowning, even if you drown in the process. It is a running into the flames for another. Humanity needs all the care we can give through the mission of mercy.
Mary Parton