I write an op-ed column for my local newspaper once a month. Last Saturday, my column focussed on loving your neighbor. It's been something knocking around in my head for awhile. I even diaried some of my earlier thoughts
here.
Here's my last graf:
The appropriate response to violence, Gandhi believed, is non-violence. Some may think that non-violence is the easy way out, but nothing could be further from the truth. Jesus taught us to love our enemies. He loved his enemies to the point of dying for them. Until the death of a child in Baghdad, or even a bomb-throwing insurgent, touches us as deeply as that of an American soldier, we are feeding the very terror we seek to obliterate.
This isn't terribly revolutionary stuff here on kos, but it did garner the nastiest LTEs and emails I've gotten so far, more so than columns on separation of church and state and the sorry state of the media. It seems the good Christians of High Point NC are having nothing to do with this "love yer neighbor" business.
Our family morns at the Love shown us when the planes hit the twin towers on Sept 11,2001. The Cowards that flew that plane into the building and killed our 21 year old neice sure showed us how much he loved us!!!!!!!
On top of Omaha Beach in France are almost 10,000 crosses that espressed our love for the French People-eliminating the Crazy Hitler.!!!
We have almost 500,000 thousand DEAD Americans --MEN and Women that showed their Love for their fellow MAN in WW2.
Please don't print Crap in the paper blaming us for what we are doing and have done in the Past to LOVE our fellow man.
I will gladly surrender my Purple Heart ande Bronze star for the return to where it was ,before so many LOVED US at Pearl Harbor and around the WORLD.
[Spelling, punctuation, and capitalization errors sic.]
Now, is it just me, or is this guy making my point for me?
In the column, I referenced the Greensboro Truth and Reconciliation hearings, wherein a group of local citizens has come together to try to sort out what happened when Klan members clashed with union organizers in 1979, leaving several dead. It's an open wound, and many see the Commission as rubbing salt in it rather than trying to close it for good.
Recently, I heard Virgil Griffin [former Grand Dragon of the KKK] in a radio interview after his testimony at the Greensboro Truth and Reconciliation hearings. He said, "I'm as good as any man that walks on this earth." Wow. I had to stop what I was doing and catch my breath. Yes, I thought. Yes, you are. God help us all.
But even Virgil, bless his heart, has the ability to look through another's eyes. Not to do so requires an act of will, a turning away from one's own humanity. Why do we do this? Because it is emotionally easier than solving the problem at hand, than trying to think the problem through. Compassion is natural to all of us, but living it takes some practice.
Now, keep in mind that, after being raised Southern Baptist, I became a rabid atheist in college. I have recently joined a Unitarian Univeralist congregation. I'm starting to think that maybe a belief in a unifying spirit might be beneficial to mankind, or at least to me personally.
A shout out to Teacherken's diary on "The Spiral Staircase," Karen Armstrong's book about leaving a convent for academia. I quoted it {the book, not the diary) in my column. A wonderful book.
So, I relate this story not to toot my own horn, but to hear your thoughts on the matter. Am I becoming hopelessly Pollyannish, or more human? Take the poll.