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Out on the Edge of Darkness

I'm not a big fan of writing about controversial topics. I don't like to post things on Facebook or my blog that invite discourse. Not because I don't enjoy discourse. I do! But because I don't believe people really talk on public forums--I think they fight.

I don't want to fight. Not about who should be the next president, not about gun control, not about human rights, not about terrorism. I don't want to say anything that will cause someone I care about to rear up and tear a deeper hole in the fabric of our society, just because we happen to disagree.

But as I continue to process the latest casualty of hate, I can't not say that I'm devastated. I'm so sad for the lives lost and the lives forever changed by one man's interpretation of what the world should really look like. Imagine the darkness he must have lived in, that what we perceived to be freedom and beauty looked twisted and evil to him.

I'm not asking you to put yourself in his shoes or give any shits at all about the way this manic saw the world. I'm just thinking it might be good to remember that there's a disease in there that distorts what is real and what is good. A disease we do not all live with. We do not all have other-dysmorphic disorder (I just made that up)--a condition that causes us to see the other not as a reflection of ourselves, not as a human being, but as a monster that must be destroyed before it destroys us.

You and me? We don't suffer from that, OK? We don't suffer from that at all. We are good and we are kind and we care about each other and we care when a life is lost to violence. Some of us can empathize with these victims and the rest of us can at least sympathize.

We don't have other-dysmorphic disorder, but we sure do like to engage in conversations that tempt us to mimic the symptoms. We suffer the impulse to make deaths political. We suffer the impulse to choose a side. We suffer the impulse to throw religion and rhetoric and "rights" at a wound that won't be healed by any of these rift-ripping efforts to engage.

I don't have an answer to how to solve that, except to suggest that we just stop. Let's just stop trying to make a statement. Let's remember we have minds fully capable of loving and touching any other human being, regardless of race, religion, gender identity, political party, etc. Let's not conveniently choose to forget that we have been gifted with this capacity at exactly the moment when it matters most.

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