Yesterday I was angry. Today I am just heartbroken. This is the world we have created. We beautiful, magical, human creatures had the power to make this place into a paradise for all, and instead we scrape and scramble in an attempt to make a paradise for one. We try to improve our own situations and reinforce our own worldviews at the expense of the rest of humanity. We built this. Police killing innocent men. Men killing innocent police officers. This culture of violence and hate and simmering resentment. We did this. We gave up peace for our own selfishness.
The first message I awoke to this morning on my phone was from my pastor. We need to rethink Sunday’s service. There has been another shooting. Five police officers in Dallas have been murdered at a peaceful protest. The second thing I read was on my Facebook wall, where someone had posted that this tragedy had occurred specifically because of all the anger towards white people yesterday. He said that the murder of those officers was our fault, for speaking up against the white privilege that is the death of so many black people. How can there be peace with messages like that?
I so desperately long for peace. It hurts my very body, the longing is so strong. To walk out the doors with no fear that my neighbor has a gun, or that I am in danger from police harassment. I want to say to the world, “Just get along!” Honestly, my children are better behaved than the lot of you. But there is a gap. A chasm. I hear one friend cry out in lament, “I do not feel safe because of my skin color!” And then I hear another friend cry out “I do not feel safe because people of other cultures are coming to kill me!” I hear “I am am not safe because there are too many guns!” and I hear “I am not safe because I do not have a gun!” How can there be peace when there is little or nothing to agree upon?
How about no more killing? Can we at least start there? No one deserves to die for having a busted tail light. No one deserves to die in the line of duty for doing their job. No one deserves to die for resisting arrest. No one deserves to die for threatening someone else. No one deserves to die for murdering someone else either. Oh, we can’t agree on that either? Huh.
Until we can agree on the basic fact that life has value, all life, then there can never be peace. As long as black life is undervalued, there can never be peace. As long as we consider the death penalty an acceptable form of punishment, there can never be peace. As long as life is disposable, there can never be peace. And I cannot live in a world where there is no peace. So I pledge today that I will never, under any circumstances, intentionally take the life of another human being. Let there be peace on earth, and let it begin with me.