Justifying atrocity

There is no justification for atrocity. Not a single one.

Atrocity is the easy route. Remove x to not have to consider again – x being a person, a community, an ethnicity, a forest, a river, a city. It is for the weak and vengeful. The righteous and superior. The cowards who cannot reach deep into their being and be at peace with their vulnerability, compassion and humanity.

Peace is hard. 

Peace is a commitment that asks 100% of everything we have.

It asks us to listen as we have never listened before. 

Listen to understand the other, even as we rail to disagree. Even as our insides screech with righteousness. 

It asks us to step above our longing for violence, for vengeance. It asks us to put aside the pain, oh the pain, of the horror inflicted upon us. To decide that the pain, while it will never subside, can become the arrow for peace. Because anything else simply continues the story of writing pain amplified into other bodies and the cycle continues. 

Peace is hard. 

It asks us to let go of things we have held as central to our identity. For all parties to put aside things in order to create space for peace.

It asks us to become different. Not the past. Not the present. A future where dignity and respect abide for all creatures. Different is difficult.

Peace is hard. 

It begins with the commitment that peace is possible. 

And the reconciliation that we do indeed desire peace, for I believe many do not. Many profit from the drama, war, violence and power differential. This is their identity, their status. 

There is no justification for atrocity. What humanity is demonstrating now is our incredible immaturity, the complete absence of wisdom, and a corruption of being that smells of a terminal disease. 

I wonder, as I know many do, when we might ever learn.

Photo Taken December 30th 2023