Wandering Along the. Path: Right Speech

I didn't want to hear the outcome of the Rittenhouse trial and I really, really, really don't want to hear the outcome in the Arbury trial. Accountablility is not a currency in our culture right now. Fearful people with guns terrorize all of us. They cannot see the humanity in others, because they live inside a vortex of fear of "other". Other is who the rest of us are. When I went back to the tiny town in Virginia where I'd lived for six years as a child, I expected changes, attutudes transformed. But when a childhood friend hosted a dinner party for me, the guests made fun of my being from the west coast, and therefore probably liberal, and taunted me several times because I was the fool, for believing in equality and justice, the definition of each being so different from their take on it. I remembered when we moved fifty years ago, there was much gossip and rumor that my mother had dyed purple hair and other bizarre stories. In fact my mother was battling brain cancer and suffering horribly, and so was our dad and my brother and I. We were not surfing or smoking dope or having wild parties. But we were no longer in the South, so we became alien. I pray with all my heart that my grandchildren don't have to live in such a polarized, paranoid culture. Because fear is the danger, and it results in acts that murders the souls and sometimes bodies of people we won't bother to understand or empathize with others.