Love and Calm Assertion

Today I feel torn between two seemingly polar opposite objectives. On the one hand, I feel compelled to speak up and speak out about my mother’s death. I need to know who and I need to why. I also need to know that her killer(s) are no longer free to perpetrate the same senseless acts of violence again. Yet, on the other hand, I have already forgiven the person(s) that took my mother’s life. When I say I have "forgiven", I mean I have ceased to judge. I have separated the act from the actor and recognized murder for what it really is: The failure to understand that what we do to another we do to ourselves. Put another way, I see clearly that we, the human race, are one body. When any member suffers or is left behind, the whole body aches. So, rather than crying out for vengeance, I find myself praying for my mother's killer(s). I keep imagining what it would be like for him (them) to experience the kind of deep ecstasy I have found during the moments when I have recklessly abandoned myself before God. In those moments the dividing line that usually seems to exist between me and the vastness of God’s love disappears. My encounters with God's love have transformed me again and again.

Over the years, God has erased my wounds one by one. In God’s presence, I am literally undone. Therefore, I feel as though I know a secret the telling of which would destroy the entrenched self hatred that makes murder possible in the first place. I feel helpless to tell this secret though. I have a hard time imagining that my mother’s killer(s) would be able to receive it (or that I would be able to communicate it). Certainly, words seem inadequate. This fact does not lessen my desire to impart the knowledge. In other words, I don’t just want my mother’s killer(s) to be brought to justice, at least not the kind of imperfect retributive justice our society dispenses. Instead, I am fervently hoping for his (their) reclamation. To hope for anything else would be a violation of the woman I have become and the woman my mother was. She believed that lost souls could be found and that lives can be changed with one touch from the Source. I am only following in her footsteps. At the same time, however, I am certain murder cannot be allowed to stand unchecked.

As I grapple with these seeming contradictions, I am also enlarging my vision. I am expanding the horizons of the possible. I can’t quite formulate the picture. But I am standing here in the gap holding a space for the miracle to unfold. I am opening myself as the bridge between the healing hand of God and the heavy hand of the criminal justice system, and in so doing, I am rejecting hatred and vengeance in favor of love and calm assertion.