The Standard Introduction    

 Life is a collaborative effort, encompassing more than we know.  In a time of "information overload," news, communication, and travel across great distances is common, yet we often talk at each other without listening, communicating, or understanding.
 Humanity needs its icons, but also its iconoclasts to grow beyond the good and bad qualities that now limit and describe us.  The essences of both God and us remain, in the midst of questions, to be discovered, experienced, and expressed.
 Please share in this on-going dialogue, remembering to indicate whether and how you wish to be identified.
 Blessings, love, and peace to you.                  ---Sister Who
 
A Tragedy of Humanity--Symbolized by the Deaths of Fifteen Young People

The violent events that occurred on the birthday of Adolf Hitler at Columbine High School in Littleton, Colorado, recently, are but faces of the unresolved subconscious mind of the human race.  
 Until we “own” each event, until we are willing to ask how each of us contributed to a world in which violent action is still possible, healing will not come.  As long as we insist that the enemy is someone else and not ourselves, healing will not come.  As long as we follow in the footsteps of Adolf Hitler and negate rather than nurture diversity, healing and lasting peace will not come.
A local newspaper told of a carpenter traveling many miles to erect fifteen wooden crosses in memory of the fifteen teenagers who died--described by some as thirteen victims and two murderers.  The father of one of the “victims” angrily tore down two of the crosses, insisting that the “murderers” should not be remembered along with the “victims.”  (The quotations marks do not indicate the father’s actual words; they indicate that I question the categorization of humanity that such words imply.)  I think his action was very wrong, but I also think that many emotions are still far too wounded to be able to listen to encouragements toward greater wisdom, greater truth, and greater compassion.
We are all victims, murderers, wounded ones, and healers.  We all share something with each and every young person who died.  When any of us disown wounded examples of humanity, we bury within ourselves the seed of the very thing we wish to eradicate.  If we cannot reach through the pain to decisions and actions of healing, the brokenness will continue to be passed from one person to the next.  Sometimes someone will recognize that this is happening and sometimes no one will see the evil plant until it flowers again--often even bigger than before.
In one young person is the experience of being violently confronted both with someone else’s brokenness and also with the mortality of one’s physical body.  In another young person is the desperation of unmet emotional and psychological needs that have been ignored for far too long.  When in some way or other, the unmet needs are all one knows--even if this knowledge is purely subconscious--perception and judgment are radically altered.
Having been “created in the image of God,” (I can think of a number of ways of interpreting this phrase, but all are equally applicable to what I’m about to say), one of the needs of the human spirit is justice.  In many ways we are still learning, individually and collectively, just what the true definition of justice is.  More often, life experience is filled with what justice is not.  One example drawn from my own high school experiences was the grossly unequal distribution of funds.  The athletic department--with which I was as uninvolved as possible--received abundant financial support.  The art, music, and foreign language departments, on the other hand (with which I was much more involved), were reduced a little more as each year passed.  Justice requires that we go beyond tolerance of diversity to being mutually supportive of each individual’s full involvement in whatever aspects of life make the specific person’s heart sing.  Justice requires that we do not assume adversarial postures or relationships toward one another.
The potential for that which is truly insanity that lies (usually) hidden within each and every one of us, is yet another part of ourselves that we must accept in order to become truly whole and complete.  As long as we insist that someone else is more evil than we ourselves are, we disown the full spectrum of ourselves, we negate the multi-dimensional reality of the other person, and we remain in dysfunction and disharmony--however obvious or subtle the expressions of this may be.
Who was it who first said, “There but for the grace of God go I”?  Perhaps it doesn’t matter who said this, if we can just grasp the truth of these words--that with a different set of circumstances and life-experiences, any one of us could have been either the person shot at close range or the person pulling the trigger.  In less physical ways, I strongly suspect that we have all pulled the trigger on another person at some point in time or other.
What happened at Columbine High School was tragic.  The scapegoating, blaming, and ignorant comments that have followed, however, I find to be equally as tragic.  Greater surveillance, restrictiveness, parental discipline, or required social involvement only change the expressions without addressing the causes.  
 If I want to remove a particular dandelion from the lawn in front of the house (though personally I’m actually fond of the durable golden flowers), and if I also wish to avoid toxic chemicals that may poison my living space as well, I must get down on my knees and press my fingers deeply into the dirt.  I must carefully dig around the tap root all the way to its tip and not leave even the tiniest piece behind, since even this could grow to replace everything that I removed.  
 I must be willing to be personally and directly involved in ways that require humility, persistence, careful inspection without any preconceived notions about how deeply such roots do or do not grow, and I must be willing to accept that the original seed of this plant may have been unwittingly carried to this very spot by none other than myself.  
 I must willing to “own” my involvement in life, with all the good and bad influences I unavoidably bring with me.  I believe that only by accepting the truth of such interconnectedness is a truly beautiful garden even possible.  Only by understanding that “weeds” and “flowers” are simply names we use to distinguish those plants we favor from those we do not, will we begin to understand that “victim” and “murderer” are simply words we use to
distinguish those who do things of which we approve, from those who do things of which we do not approve.
 Consequently, until we are willing to honestly embrace equally the times in which we have each been murderers, victims, students, teachers, abusers, healers, children, and parents, and in that embrace to find forgiveness of ourselves for all of our failures, we shall not find the truest experience of divine love that is the real definition of heaven.
Ultimately, though individual distinctions remain for purposes of specific identification, the notion that we are in any way disconnected from each other may be the greatest illusion over which humanity still needs to triumph.

“You’re preaching to the choir.”  --a friend.
“If anyone else leads the church, they won’t know how to sing in harmony.”  --Sister Who


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