Those who have read my posts over the past 2+ decades since joined DK know that I am by choice, and after a long period of exploring and wandering through multiple religious and spiritual traditions, a member of the Religious Society of Friends, a Quaker, by choice, or as we say,nby convincement, And yet there are things to which my response is not always one of total non-violence. That is to say that there are circumstances where I will use force or violence, and others where I can accept its use by others. As one who taught adolescents for almost 3 decades, the example I most often use is that I am prepared if necessary to kill to protect the students entrusted to my care, even if they may be 300 pound all-Met football players.
In light of what happened in Butler PA on Saturday, and in the greater context of both rhetoric and actions in our larger current political environment, I want to offer a reflection on force and at least the potential for what is violence from a personal perspective.
I do not propose what I offer as anything but my personal reflections. I offer them in the hope that others might engage and share their perspectives, so that perhaps together we may come to a deeper understanding of what we can do to avoid what might otherwise be a series of violent catastrophes in our civic and political life.
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