When I heard the news about the massacre at the New Zealand mosques on Friday, I had to stop, and think.
Something my dad taught me, a long time ago, came back to me: “What’s your part in this?”
I hadn’t thought of that conversation for a long time.
We had it more than once. I’d say: “But, Dad, I don’t have a part. Someone else did that! Not me!!”
To which he’d say: “Well … isn’t this a situation that you’re in? So, if you’re in it, what are you bringing to it? How are you responding? What part does your response play?”
That question, that [implied] advice, grew out of his conviction that “everything is connected to everything else.”
“What’s out there is what’s in here,” he’d say, and point to his heart.
…
Honestly … then … that conversation … made me so mad.
I always wanted to see myself as separate from “that.”
But ultimately our lives and the way we live them participate in “that,” make the whole world what it is, play a part in the whole field of interconnections and relations that just is the world. A small part, possibly, but a vital one.
Remembering my dad, I had to step back and ask myself:
Where’s that violence coming from … in me? What form does that violence take … in me? How does that impulse to hate, to fight, to “get rid of,” come from, operate … in me?
What can I do about that?
How can I lay down that violence, and turn towards peace, right here, right now?
Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.
Romans 12:21
Matters of Interpretation 