I’m returning to this project I started awhile ago, where I aimed to explore each verse of Lao Tzu’s Tao te Ching and ponder on what they mean to me.
In the 31st verse, Lao Tzu warns against the use of weapons and if only for a moment, makes you imagine a world without the excessive use of weapons as tools of violence. I just watched the video of Jacob Blake describing the way his life changed in an instant, as a result of a White police officer shooting him seven times in his back at close range in Kenosha, Wisconsin. From his hospital bed he talks about managing pain and the loss of mobility that is now his current reality. This is just one of a multitude of cases that’s happened in this country and continues to happen across the world. Jacob Blake’s story is so powerful because he, unlike so many of our brothers and sisters that have been victims of police brutality, survived the attack on his life. Although we mourn his paralysis and the trauma of his 3 children watching this happen to their father, it’s comforting to know that he still has his life and his voice.
What will the future look like if society currently acts as if there is no regard for the sanctity of life? Wayne Dyer once said, “We measure the quality of our civilization by the sophistication of our weapons” and he’s not wrong. The GOP Covid-19 bill included an estimated $6 Biillion in defense spending while its citizens continue to face some of the worst realities they’ve ever seen in their lifetime.
The proliferation of the use of weapons, specifically of guns in this country, is a giant step away from our highest nature as evolved human beings. The names of those among us that have lost their lives in the last decade alone due to police brutality, hate crimes, terrorist attacks from within and without, are too many to even fathom. How will our civilization have a chance of posterity when the root word, civil, is becoming a thing of the past? We’ve devolved back to a time when killing was a form of entertainment.
The task of reinstating civility is in each of our hands. I’m afraid there is no leader coming to save and lead us to the promised land.
~ I recently read this poem by St. Thomas Aquinas and I think it’s exactly what we need to hear today:
How is it they live for eons in such harmony - the billions of stars
when most men can barely go a minute
without declaring war in their mind against someone they know.
There are wars where no one marches with a flag,
though that does not keep casualties from mounting.
Our hearts irrigate this earth.
We are fields before each other.
How can we live in harmony?
First we need to know
we are all madly in love
with the same
God.
Ai-Creo