Yesterday, near my home, a 14-year-old murdered her sister by plunging a knife repeatedly into her throat. I am taking a news fast, but one of my colleagues told me about this.

The 14-year-old attended a private school I went to in the 1960s. The family lives in an affluent neighborhood. The 14-year-old will be tried as an adult, although given the family’s standing in the community, I don’t foresee that happening. Plus she is white. We know what would happen if she was black.

I keep thinking how easy it is to think these situations would never happen to me, or you or my family or yours. Then I think of all the close calls I personally had growing up during periods of existential angst, the tumultuous 1960’s, the multiple assassinations. I remember bad LSD trips when I almost killed myself. Becoming an adult has invariably led me to feelings of relief I made it this far.

There for the grace of God go I.

God in all of His distressing disguises.

Attacking this family by imagining I am better than they are makes no sense. Or given similar circumstances, I wouldn’t do the same thing. Self righteous indignation is child’s play and separates from any good that can come from this.

The journey of freedom from ego and therefore our personality and intellect requires connecting to an impersonal aspect of inner being, the inner truth. Surely the last year of solitude has laid the groundwork for this kind of insight. The human mind and intellect is incapable of accepting anything that does not conform with what it has previously experienced or learned. In the process of only relying on the mind and it’s intellect, and relating to the suffering and chaos reflected outwardly in the world, we’ve cut ourselves off from Divinity.

“God does not command we do great things, only little things with great love.”
Mother Teresa