When your heart aches and there are no answers to WTF?
Even through the shock of hearing the news of yet another terrorist act (and I’m including mass shootings here in the US in that category), my heart aches. I wonder, WTF?! And after a while, knowing I have no answers, I go on with my day. It’s cold and calloused, it’s where we are now, and it’s all I know to do.
Each time I hear this kind of news, though, I think about the person who committed the act of violence. If I believe in the “we are all One” then a part of them is a part of me and that makes me think.
Richard Rohr said, “You have to find some way to not become a cynical or negative person, a person who keeps walking around and opening your eyes in the outside world but inside you close down, a person who stops expecting tomorrow to be better than today.”
Who am I that is at one with someone who creates violent acts? I am the person who beats myself up, feels unworthy or unlovable, doubts my truest knowing…even when there is evidence to the contrary.
Taking a wild guess you know what I’m talking about here.
One of the most powerful quotes I ever read is from Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. ”
Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.”
Start within. Start within. Start within.
In moments like this, when I watch Trump and his supporters using divisive and hateful language, when I see the news of Brussels, when I listen to our bartender say she’s going to say good-bye to her brother, an Infantryman, who’s being ship “over there” (to an undisclosed location), I have to remember love.
Is there room for love, even here? In the fear, doubt, pain, anguish, anger? Of course. But where’s the bridge?
Start within.
Dr. King Jr also said, “I have decided to stick with love. Hate is too great a burden to bear.” Amen. So tonight I pray for love (yes, I said I pray). I pray that I can love myself more than I fear the world around me, that I can love the people I don’t understand or like their actions, that there are acts of love, joy, and mercy that come out of all the violence. I pray for love in your heart and love in mine. That love isn’t enough. It needs some action backing it up, I realize, but this is my baby step.
How are you amping up the love tonight? I’d love to hear. Leave a comment below and let me know, please.
“When you are sorrowful look again in your heart, and you shall see that in truth you are weeping for that which has been your delight.” Khalil Gibran
― Kahlil Gibran