The two young men were terrified. They were in the midst of a hostile crowd and were being pelted with epitaphs, slurs and debris. Suddenly a young woman named Imani, stepped from the crowd and led them through to safety. When asked, this brave young black woman, who had saved two neo-Nazis, acknowledged had she been in the midst of their hostile crowd she would not expect such help; but that she had done this as her act of kindness and did not expect praise or thanks.
The past nine months of building anxiety culminating in the murder of a young woman by a neo-Nazi, has set the entire country on edge. During that same weekend, a University of Virginia librarian who tried to protect students from the gun and torch-wielding mob, died the following day of a stroke. The same hate infested event injured 19 people, some whose lives will be altered irreparably.
This week 15,000 normal citizens in Boston stood up to hate and all that attends that evil and the Nazis fled the scene because they knew if that it came to violence, they would be the injured ones. Of course they ran away.
I think Jesus would weep at how his Church and Message have been used as a weapon of hate and bigotry. Of all groups, secular and religious, that have fled Donald Trump and his message of hate and division, the Evangelicals have not. Despite their condemnation of sins of the flesh, they have exonerated him of sexual misconduct. Despite his flagrant disdain for the suffering among us with his policies, they cling to him. Despite his message of hate and division, Evangelicals have exalted him. Why?
His Holiness, the 14th Dalai Lama has called Kindness his religion. We all want to be happy and none of us wants to suffer. All who are born will die. We are all the same. Yet there are many who can’t see anything except you and me instead of “we,” so their suffering is the worst and they lash out at all who they see as “the other.” They think because surely their actions can’t be the base of their suffering, it must be “other’s” fault.
There is tyranny in hatred. It holds the hater tight in its grasp and causes great distress and harm. In love there is freedom. It opens the heart and allows the clear clean breeze of caring and compassion to flow. There is a choice and each of us must make our own: Hell or Peace in our lifetime.