Killin' us softly
... who's praying for Baghdad?
281 dead from a suicide bomber last Sunday... Two hundred and eighty-one. Peace be upon them. Who's praying for the officers? 11 shot, 5 dead in Dallas. Peace & grace be theirs. Who's praying for the countless lives snuffed out by needless violence? Peace to them & their families. Now here's the hard part... Who's praying for the perpetrators? Forgiveness & grace be theirs, too. Violence is the problem we have yet to fully understand, not just the '-isms' that undergird it. People carry the '-isms' in their heart/mind. People then inflict the worst parts of themselves on others as directed by their"-isms" & the fear they produce. People are responsible to, not for, other people. People started this fire of violence that rages now as if it has a mind of its own. But it doesn't. It's our minds at work here. We use our own minds against ourselves. We, the people, must stop what we have started. One-by-one, one-to-one. No one is exempt. We don't get a pass. Violence is a nuanced thing, like poison or a bomb or a child or fire -- a very nuanced thing. We cannot use reductionist - either-or, this or that - thinking to get out of this vortex of violence. We must grow out of it. We must become more human, not less, to leave this lesson behind us. There is no "one correct answer" the way our schools train us to believe. We will need to dispose ourselves of all the answers. And if you don't wanna help, you can have all the seats. Before you ask another person "what should we do then?", make sure you've spent enough quality time considering what YOU CAN do now. Because, YOU CAN do something. You, as a person, must live with other people. Some you like, some you don't , but "together" is not negotiable. No one has ever been born, nor lived, nor died without other people at some point being involved. Is it not obvious, then, that "together" is not negotiable? Prayers alone will not stop the violence we so clearly & so painfully don't understand... yet. "We" is our state of being. "We" is how I hope god will be invoked in the future. We can let go of the "-isms" that will unseat the violence... now, if we wanna. Do we wanna... yet? How about now?
