Death
To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven. ~ Ecclesiastes 3:1
When someone’s time comes and they pass beyond the veil it is a sad experience for those who remain in this world. We can usually take some consolation if their passing was from natural causes. Last year my friend’s mother passed away after a long battle with ovarian cancer. When she finally left us, her death felt more like a release then anything else. Her immortal soul was freed from her suffering body.
When people have their lives ripped from them by murder, no part of my mind is able to comprehend it. It is so much harder to cope with death when it comes without reason or warning. The violence humanity seems capable of inflicting upon one another is so overwhelming, it sometimes feels as if our culture is addicted to violence more than love. It pushes my mind to into an emotional void that I do not like the dwell it but that is very hard to escape from. Oddly I feel no vengeance towards towards those who steal these lives, somehow my heart cannot contribute to the violence their actions spawns.
I can’t honestly say that I feel compassion for these people either, I want to feel outraged, but I just feel tremendous sadness. I wonder what forces in life push a person into believing hatred and murder are acceptable? Though I am not Christians I have usually found comfort in the words above from Ecclesiastes, I recognize that my soul needs to believe that there is a reason for everything. However if you read the passage further it goes on to say that there is a time for killing, war and hate. All of which I do not have room for in my heart. Maybe an Ojibway prayer is more fitting:
Grandfather,
Look at our brokenness.We know that in all creation
Only the human family
Has strayed from the Sacred Way.We know that we are the ones
Who are divided
And we are the ones
Who must come back together
To walk in the Sacred Way.Grandfather,
Sacred One,
Teach us love, compassion, and honor
That we may heal the Earth
And heal each other.
People often say that we must heal the earth for the sake of our children, because they are the ones who will inherit it, but I wonder, who will heal humanity? We are broken too. Do we have what it takes to heal the earth and heal each other?
April 25th, 2008 at 5:45 pm
Like you I understand that there is a need for all things, but for me that understanding leans more to the understanding of hate. I’ve come to feel that if you do not feel nothing about something than you either hate it or love it. These might seem like grand black and whites, but its realy a more of a specturm from white to black, hate to love.
Hate is the force of change in this world, and perhaps change is the best word for it and maybe hate is the misuse of our power to change. All the same hatred has become our emotional relation to the desire for change, and you can tone it down and say that you might want to change somthing becuase you do not like it, but its just a nice way of saying you only hate that thing a little bit.
As for love, it seems at times to be a force of preservation. The more we love things the less we seek to change them and the more we seek to maintian what they are. Love is no more completly good than hate is completly evil, people can love things that are wrong, just as they can hate things that are right.
Hate and love are parts of who we are and the words we use to relate to those parts, in our freedome to chose we inevitably make wrong choices but that does not give to anyone a right to take from us all somthing inportant for the sake that it may not be misused.
I’ll not ask anyone to see things my way, I only wish be the voice of those that might see as I do and yet not have an opertunity to voice this veiw.
Reply to This
April 25th, 2008 at 8:12 pm
I really liked this Ojibway prayer. Healing the hurt that brings on
violence should be a major aim of everyone. There are times in
our lives when we all walk that fine line of allowing hate to control
us.
I disagree with Reisaf a bit. I think more change comes from love.
Love itself prompts change whereas hate is more a reaction to
change and often centered in fear and that is why it is so destructive.
Reply to This
April 26th, 2008 at 8:27 am
I may not come across here as I want to.
A short time ago my nephew killed him self and I know it still bothers me.
Their was tension between my nephew parents and our family.
I find comfort in this Ojibway prayer.
I always hope someday the fence maybe repaired between my husband brother and my hubby.
Thanks for listening.
Reply to This