Since the events in Paris, I have found the things I normally write about and that catch my eye pale in context.
Paris was the ‘flash point,’ but as any number of my friends from around the world have suggested, these things have been happening in Cameroon, Nigeria, the Philippines, Mali, Pakistan, Yemen, Saudi Arabia, Lebanon, Egypt and China to name just a few places.
Maybe it took the symbolic 'City of Lights,' a city so many Westerner’s identify with, to shake our sensibilities.
The language of sorrow, as the language of joy, has no culture, no shade of skin, no social status…the vocabulary is common to all mankind.
I simply cannot write at the moment in a contained way to express all that I have been feeling.
It is easy to demonize and entertain thoughts of fear, hatred and revenge…the greatest revenge, however, is to NOT become like the perpetrators…The greatest revenge can be found in the powerful words of Antoine Leiris who lost his wife in the Paris shootings last week.
"Vendredi soir vous avez volé la vie d’un être d'exception, l’amour de ma vie, la more de mon fils mais vous n’aurez pas ma haine.” (On Friday night, you stole away the life of an exceptional being, the love of my life, the mother of my son, but you will not have my hatred).
The greatest revenge is, as Christ said, “…pray for them which persecute you and say all manner of evil against you…”
Steal from the ’thief’ who is intent in taking human life, and then through concentric circles of thought after thought after thought steal our very hearts…steal from the 'thief' by denying him his investment of fear...steal from the thief by cultivating all the love you can muster for those within and outside the circle of your life.
Our life is but a vapor…and yet…and yet…every breath precious.
I hope to write again soon…
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