My Dear Sweet Friend
How I love you – and how I adore and embrace your message of
light and laughter as a service to this world.
But I have been watching your posts over the last two days since the
most recent horrific event in our world has unfolded. And there is something
that just doesn’t sit right with me. In many of your posts you say that we
ought to turn off the media and delete those stories in an effort to send our
message to that same set of sources that they should stop the hype and backward
glorification of these killers and perpetrators. And for me that is too
passive.

But let me say a bit about how I perceive your message of
hope. It is not wrong – not in the
least. In fact it is the only message we
should preach. It is the context of that
hope with which I have issue. Just as
you cannot see in total darkness, you cannot see in total light. If we look only for the positive in our
world, accent only the good that exists, and turn our backs on the darkness,
the hatred and the violence of our chaotic world, we run the risk of being
blinded by the light.
Life is painful and chaotic, and that pain is exacerbated by
hoping for or wishing that is would somehow be different than it is. Suffering, says the Buddha, is caused by
trying to deny the reality of the now and wishing for something better. We
first have to accept that there are people in this world who are so alienated
and lost that their only thought is to inflict that pain on others. Whether we call that evil or the devil or
mental illness does not matter. Whether that manifests in genocide or warring
or the slaughter of innocent children (close to home or on the other side of
the planet) is irrelevant. It exists;
and my first calling is to recognize that it does exist.

Love is the antidote, caring and compassion are its vehicles.
Every sage who ever walked on this planet has instructed us to love our
enemies, not just our friends. Anyone can love those who love. Anyone can shine
brightly when surrounded by others of the light. That is the easy part. But to stand up with tears
of grief streaming down your cheeks and shine a ray of hope, is the really hard
part of this work. To name the darkness and embrace another, to become a
contagious infection of caring and compassion and spread love where there is
none, that is the real work.
So I will not turn it off – not because I get some twisted
horror-movie thrill out of human carnage – but because I am called to stand up
to evil and darkness and not back down, and not dampen my light. The hope I
peddle is that if and when we love each other, there can be no more of this
pain. (And I just want to say that I am as crushed by the death reports coming
from Afghanistan or the Gaza strip as I am from Newtown CT. Every soldier was once a baby rocked by his
or her mother; every one of us had a beautiful future in front of us and
brought a sparkle to our parent’s eyes.) We need to spread the message that the
best action to prevent violence is the bonds we forge between each of us when
we love and embrace each other. In a
message to the parents of the children that attend our school, I said that now
is the time to start talking to the other parents, get to know them, make them
part of your family – love each other as your own.
Now is a time of action, and the battlefront is where the darkness
is the deepest. Your message is right on
but my request is that we wage radical love in those darkest places of the
human experience. I can love more powerfully than anyone can hate, and when you
and I join together, that becomes exponentially greater. And that is how we
will win, one at a time; one more at a time; every time we say “we” and we mean
one more person that the last time we said it. And we will overcome the darkness.
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