The Western world has awakened again to the reality of violent cults led by insane people exploiting disaffected people to commit horrific acts of murder.  I listen to a lot of public radio news.  Almost every day there is a report of some kind of killing and bombing.  Major “stories.”   Every day there is news of this, like an expected litany of victims.  My mind and emotions have reeled day after day, listening to the stories of those attacked or stolen in Africa, in Syria, in Palestine, in Iraq, in Afghanastan.   For me it is not numbing, nor has it gone in one ear and out the other.   American mass killing after mass killing with piles of guns, weekly death tolls from gang violence in American cities.  Lately (listing only some), Nigerian school girls kidnapped, Kenyan students being killed, the families of educated women in Afghanastan being massacred and women hiding, images of tens of thousands of Syrian refugees clinging to boats or drowning, crossing the sea to camps as they escape massacres and extremism and war, having no choice between their killing dictator and other killers.  Images of masses of refugees being barred from trains to Europe, screaming, crying for their children.  Yesterday, it was reported that a dismembered body was found as proof of a suicide bomber near a sports stadium in Paris – not even a person or human, but a body dis-membered.  By now, just in recent memory, hundreds of thousands have been killed during this post 9/11, post-Iraq invasion era, or are fleeing war areas of extremism.

It has felt for a long time like a cloud of darkness and sadness is ever-present, with the world in such violence and division.  I have tried at times to avoid the news.  Changed the radio station.  I retreat to Nature, art, meditation, prayer, and the little things I can do in my own frail little life.

When I feel this burden, tiny in comparison to souls near and far facing violence, I try my best to remember that, ultimately, there is a connectedness between all living things – a oneness, an overarching Reality that is shared.  You can’t see this directly as a thing, but you can know it and feel it.  There is something, whatever named or called, or however envisioned, greater than “us,” greater than the writhing, emotionally, spiritually and morally disconnected mass of humans.   Forgetting this Reality that we all live through and by has led “the world” here.  Fighting against and hating others’ “beliefs,” rejecting and fearing differences – can all result in “dis-affection.”  Fear results in this.  Abandonment, exclusion, poverty, inequality, ignorance (lack of true education) results in this.  Lack of really seeing each other results in this.  Failure to specifically act to care for and assist others results in this.  Living out of dualism results in this.  Based on the vast, repeated evidence we see now, we should realize that dis-affection must be the worst of all feelings, must be the most desperate, must be vacuously lonely, must be, in its extreme, horrifying.

To be “against” something gives a false sense of filling a void.  What could be at the root of the void?  Forgetting the Truth about who we really are, turning our backs on the still small voice in precious silence, forgetting that the “other” is us.  The victims, the refugees are us.   Our hearts ache for them because they are us.  The dis-membered body is us.  We forget Compassion as taught by all of the Wisdom traditions.  Compassion not just in understanding but in the form of food, knowledge, shelter, liberty, acceptance, welcome.  Religions, even if now astray and reduced to belief systems, resulted from the real and lasting human cry of longingness to feel connection to God (by whatever name or image).  If we are each the microcosm of the macrocosm, individual blades of grass swaying in the One wind, reflections of the whole, and we consciously remember Compassion through the ways of our traditions and practices, affection may grow.  There is hope in embodying what is connected and good and right and true and compassionate.

Re-member.  In other words, put back together.  Remember.  In other words, see again.