Meting Vengeance

From State Hwy. 128 near the Colorado River - Utah

But Seeking Justice

Justice isn’t always a joyful occasion.  Sometimes, it is painful and solemn... or it should be.

I hold to the belief that all men are inherently good... or at least they start out that way.  We are the divine offspring.  Long before coming here, we were nurtured with unconditional love and perfect wisdom, reared in infinite mercy and empathy.  We communed with the gods and rejoiced in blessings of everlasting life.

Our earthy probation is one of necessary hardship and trial.  It is the refining fire that allows for true and meaningful change in our quest for exalted perfection.  We are challenged physically and spiritually.  Failure is not just common but required... but sometimes, however, that failure can be so catastrophic, even the heavens weep from a broken heart.

This is how I would sum up the life of Osama Bin Laden.  A life that started with such promise, filled with love and anticipation, only to end a tortured soul twisted by fear and hatred into profound wickedness.

I know there are some who would argue points of ideology to find purpose behind his madness but so polluted his thinking in extremes, he would have murdered the world to save it.  There is no rationale, no reason, no purpose large enough, profound enough to justify the path he took.  While still greater evils have been wrought by the hand of man for the sake of lifeless ideology, his was still a work of evil in the end.

All that said, the Lord’s is a perfect love, an unconditional love.  I have little doubt that Osama was met at the vail with loving arms and tears of joy by the Savior.  For His is a perfect understanding of limitless mercy and love.

Justice required Bin Laden be hunted down and executed for his crimes.  But ours is an imperfect justice.  Civilized society could not do to him what he inflicted on us without losing itself in such wickedness.  His was a merciful death by comparison; a pale and meager form of justice.  True justice, it would seem, is only for the gods.

The celebratory gatherings marking his execution speak not of justice but of vengeance.  There is no reverence for the sanctity of life.  No honoring the victims of his heinous crimes.  No acknowledgment of all those still suffering under the evil he cultivated.  No respect for God’s unconditional love for ALL his children.

I find celebrations commemorating the violent death of anyone, no matter how deserving, distasteful and damaging.  They’re sickly misguided and savage.  To say they are understandable really only acknowledges our ability to identify with the most base of human emotions.  It just goes to show how little we have evolved as a people and as a species. “They” who were so different from us on September 11th, 2001 don’t seem all that much different anymore.

My heart is saddened by todays events but relieved that this particular is no longer left undone.  May it bring comfort to the rational who contemplate and mourn.  May it silence the civilly insane who revel and delight.

“He who seeks vengeance must dig two graves: one for his enemy and one for himself”

~Chinese Proverb

Faith as Ethical Alchemy

The Bronx Zoo - New York City

Learning to Live Compassionately

The vase where this verbena’s dying

Was cracked by a lady’s fan’s soft blow.

It must have been the merest grazing:

We heard no sound.  The fissure grew.

The little wound spread while we slept,

Pried deep in the crystal, bit by bit.

A long, slow marching line, it crept

From spreading base to curving lip.

The water oozed out drop by drop,

Bled from the line we’d not seen etched.

The flowers drained out all their sap.

The vase is broken: do not touch.

The quick, sleek hand of one we love

Can tap us with a fan’s soft blow,

And we will break, as surely riven

As that cracked vase. And no one knows.

The world sees just the hard, curved surface

Of a vase a lady’s fan once grazed,

That slowly drips and bleeds with sadness.

Do not touch the broken vase.

~ The Broken Vase, By Sully Prudomme 

Translated by Robert Archambeau

The epistles of Paul, those actually attributed to him anyways, are filled with love for people.  He taught we can endure all manner of trial including being crucified as martyrs, have faith capable of moving mountains but if we lack charity, none of that matters.

Surprisingly, true religion is not about believing things.  It is said the Jewish rabbi, Hillel, an older contemporary of Jesus, was once approached by a group of pagans.  They said they would convert to Judaism if he could recite the entire Tora while balancing on one leg.  He responded with, “Do not do unto others what you would not have done unto you.  That is the Tora.  The rest is commentary.  Go and learn it.”  (Babylonian Talmud - Shabbat 31a)

Beyond the dogma, endless meetings, planning and herding the faithful, there is an underlying element in Mormonism, and many other religions for that matter, that often goes under appreciated; service.  I’m beginning to understand what religion tries to convey at its best.  It really doesn’t matter what you believe.  Religion is about doing things.  It’s about living in a compassionate way that changes you.  Instead of creeds and beliefs, Judaism and Islam place the emphasis on a collection of practices... like giving alms, prayer, fasting, worship.  These observances are designed to change our inner world.  Each is an opportunity to encounter God.

You also see this in the Gospels.  There is very little doctrine as we now know it.  Jesus isn’t going about giving dissertations on the Godhead, original sin, divinity, or other finer points of doctrine.  He’s going out visiting sinners, traitors, the nonbelieving and unclean... people beneath contempt.  He seemingly valued practice over ideas... much like Buddhism does today.

Religion is a form of ethical alchemy.  As we strive to behave in compassionate ways, it changes us.  Egotism and greed keep us from a knowledge of the divine.  It's not the believing of creeds or the undertaking various sacraments but compassion that allows us the perspective to apprehend the sacred.

The Buddha said that the practice of compassion can introduce us to Nirvana. Jesus said that on the last day, it's those who have visited people who are sick and naked, hungry and in prison, looked after them, who will enter the kingdom of God.  They are the ones who enter God's presence, not those who necessarily have the "correct" theology or the "right" sexual ethics.

So many different faith traditions have come to the conclusion that compassion is the test... it’s the key to exaltation.  I do not believe they all came to this same conclusion out of happenstance.  They came to it because it really does work.

We are at our most creative and wonderful when we are ready to give ourselves away... when we are in the service of others.  Equally, we are the most dangerous, the most unimaginative when we only seek ourselves and our own benefit.  It is in the service of others that we ultimately find ourselves.  When we find ourselves, we find God... not the other way around.