Skyearth Letters

In last month's column I wrote of seeing two diverging paths - the darkness of hate and violence and the brightness of love and kindness. And then darkness erupted in my area, with 15 violent deaths suffered by students in a south metro area high school. Our newspapers have been full of articles about the deaths, the woundings, the grievings, the blamings, the reasonings, the angers, the fears. Oh, and the cost in dollars.

Two weeks later, monster tornadoes ravaged Oklahoma and its neighboring states with over 50 people killed and a huge amount of damage.

What strikes me as interesting is the difference in reactions to human-created violence and death and nature-created violence and death.

The bodies are just as suddenly dead. The souls have just as suddenly left this realm of physicality. Yet what is it that horrifies us about human-enacted death and suffering? Why does the knowledge that human beings can turn on other human beings and cause them to die or be terribly hurt grip our guts?

Every one of us harbors that darkness within. We live our lives working to:
* hide it
* experience it
* surrender to it
* release it
* remove it from our psyches.

(How many of us have said, there, but for the grace of God, go I? I think it's a bit much to believe that God's grace picks and chooses...or that God even has any more grace to give than each of us can give. But I have digressed.)

Frequently, out of our mouths comes "I hate" - brussel sprouts or broccoli, a dentist's drill, picking up toys, doing something you don't want to do. Or "I hate" - someone who picks on you, who has a different accent, a different skin color, a better job, a sexy body, who speaks a different language, does something differently than you think it ought to be done, is grungy-looking and dirty. In other words, anyone who is not like you.

Every time you think or say the words "I hate ..." you add to the reservoir of hate and hate-inspired violence of this world. It includes the times you say "I could kill you for doing that" and you are merely being "funny."

Remove "hate" and "kill" from your thoughts. If you cannot love, then work towards tolerance, even indifference.

But it might make a greater difference if you work towards a lovingness that is uncloying, unsmothering, that does not infringe nor bind, a love that acknowledges the spirits of all people and animals and plants and rocks and waters and is grateful for them all.