Dearest Readers,
So Obama’s health-care bill has become law and some people are not happy about it. CBC Radio played a clip of Rush Limbaugh, the Republican radio host, saying, “We have get those bastards. We have wipe them out.”
Now, presumably he was speaking about the United States Senate elections, taking place in November of this year, but considering the fact that US President Kennedy was assassinated for his radical policy-making, Limbaugh’s words are more than just a wee bit scary.
A fellow artist posted this statement on Facebook this morning: “I don’t understand why anyone would NOT want their countrymen to have health-care.” Well, I don’t understand how people can talk about wiping other people out with such non-chalance. The hatred is so disturbing.
The next story on CBC News described the fatal stabbing of 8 elementary school children by a mentally-ill former doctor. At this point I turned off the radio.
Last week I blogged about the story I was going to tell for World Storytelling Day, which I ended up calling “God Lives in Edmonton.” The piece describes the spiritual awakening I had while living in desperate circumstances in that fair city.
Through a series of very dark and painful episodes that led me to a radical experience of Higher Love, I came to believe that good comes from bad. Not wishful thinking, not Pollyanna-like white-washing of pain but direct experience of Love borne from hate.
When I listen to frightening men like Limbaugh who are so full of that hate or hear about a man so sick he slaughters 8 little children on their way to school, I admit that the temptation to crawl under the covers and never come out is mighty. The world is too crazy. It’s out of control.
But then I remember Love. And I remember that Good comes from bad. And I remember that I know this not because of blind faith but from direct and personal experience of Love as the only Truth. And I can feel the grief and I can respond with compassion and I can offer that Love to every single person I meet, including the hateful and the sick.
We must fight the hatred with Love. It is the only Way.
Inspiring Message of the Day: “It makes no difference how deeply seated may be the trouble, how hopeless the outlook, how muddled the tangle, how great the mistake; a sufficient realization of Love will dissolve it all.” ~ Emmet Fox
