Mass shootings, expressions of rampant prejudice, church bombings, attacks on synagogues, attacks on schools – I could go on!

These unsettling events get our attention. They should. They make any reasonable person and group ask the question: “What can I do?” and “What can we do?”

Please consider these ideas designed to be deployed in unison:

• Read the reports of these events, the ones that catch your attention. Meditate on the fact that there are innocent people involved. There are children, very young children involved. Let the horror hit you even if it is something that occurred on the other side of the planet. This is not an invitation to baptize oneself in horror but to allow oneself to grow in compassion and the capacity to identify with suffering. May the inhumanity of some help you and me to become more humane, more human, more caring, more kind.
• Rid yourself of all prejudice – gross and subtle: racial, religious, and all the other ways ignorance seeps into our thinking and being. While we carry the virus we also spread it and when we do we are part of the problem and not its solution.
• Revere, love, honor, and treasure all people, especially those with whom you have religious or political differences.

(As I have written a hundred times, I am always my first reader.)

Posted on April 28, 2019 at 8:10 am in Difficult Relationships   |  RSS feed |   Reply   |   Trackback URL