Confronting Violence and Hate

Is there a single place in the world in which the specter of sudden, random, violence is sure to not confront someone? From Portland to Orlando, from Manchester to Baghdad, and all points between-beyond-north-south: everyone is everyday @ risk. Some say that is just the way things are: always have been and always will be... I've read my history books so I know there is an element of truth to that perspective...

But I've also read more than those history books! Nevertheless, here we all are: it is unmistakably clear that the hidden hate has been uncovered and unleashed: whether that hate originates from racism-sexism-anyism: or whether it originates from fear or sense of displacement: or whether it originates from gross misrepresentations of the various world religions: or whether it originates from the mad pursuit of profit, privilege, and power: or whether it originates from whatever-whoever: violence is always justified by the wilfull violent: even to the point of kidnapping, raping, and murdering innocent children...

And, of course, of all the many times and forms of violence, our inability to collectively revere the fragile life-systems of our Home Planet makes every other violence only a weak copycat act of idiocy. To collectively live and arrange our economic and political systems in such a way that the destruction of our air, soil, seed, water, and eco-systems are fundamental rights of "profit" is simply bizarre! But again, here we are...

Is there any way at all forward through this madness? I think that there is a way: one way only: to truthfully and collectively go forward into whatever possibility there is for humanity and the regeneration of Planet Earth... And that way is the mystic essence of every religion and the driving force of whatever there is of both civilization and democracy: simply put, it is compassion... One-by-one we have to accept as our spiritual-moral-economic-political-cultural obligation -- above all others -- to commit what remains of our lives to the benefit of all beings... 

In this era of "fake" and "post-truth", all that we have left of our essential human dignity is the compassion that we share -- without regard to "winning"... A simple vow to live in such a way that we personally reduce suffering in the small circles of our lives is the only sane response to the addictive madness that roams free -- like a rabid lion --  about the world harming anyone as it wills. Can we argue with the "patriot" who says it is time for the genocide of "liberals"? Can we argue and change the mind of a Taliban soldier who thinks it holy to shoot a girl in the face for possessing the temerity of believing that she has the right to an education? Can we argue with a President who cannot imagine a world without endless profit? No, well, we can, but both facts and spiritual values are irrelevant in each and every case. So what remains to us is our moral obligation to unify our lives: connect our ideals, thoughts, words, and actions and offer them to the benefit of all beings: and form intentional communities to support this living: and then to widen the circles of the compassion we serve to include our towns, cities, and nations: and finally, to stretch and extend as far as we are able, our embrace of all the earth...