Who profits?

Hey,

I miss you!  I hope you are the kind of busy that is inspiring - as opposed to exhausting!

You asked an important question.  Who profits from the violence?  I don't know if I have an answer.  I have a swirl of impressions.

Who profits from the violence?  Prisons do.  We put people in prison in this country, rather than try to help them find their humanity.  There are certain corporations that are wealthy because of our prison system.  Pharmaceutical companies are benefiting from the sheer numbers of people who need antidepressants.  Schools get extra funding for damaged students, I believe.  Any company that provides a virtual world for hurting souls to escape to...Because our lack of trust and connection in this world are too painful to bear sometimes.

Who benefits from the violence?  Any perpetrator of violence.  Some live in shame, some lurk as predators.  All have been damaged by violence.  All use violence to keep the curtain up, so we can all imagine they're fine inside there.

This stream of thought set off a kind of silly memory.  I feel a little foolish, but I'll share it anyway.  I really disliked George Bush - well, both of them, but especially the second one.  His voice, his mannerisms, caused physical revulsion.  It was sort of interesting, since I never met the man.  And the things he did, the pain and destruction he caused and his blithe dismissal of all the evil angered me and confused me.  I often stopped to wonder if he was really as dumb as he seemed. Or as obliviously heartless.

This may be as close to hate as I have ever gotten.

So in the silence of worship, for weeks, I worked on finding a place where I could love this man, to have compassion for him.  This was really, really hard spiritual work.  I had to find ways to step past revulsion.  Finally one First Day I had a breakthrough.  It came to me that he had to have been extremely abused in order to have his humanity crushed so thoroughly.  And I had compassion and gratitude.  I was grateful that he accepted so much abuse that he could demonstrate the effects of violence on innate humanity.

So who profits from violence?  Anyone, any man, any corporation who gained wealth from the inhumanity of a tortured-to-inhumanity person like Bush.  He had the family, the wealth, the powerful backing, to be given a leadership position.  He had so little humanity left that he probably doesn't know, doesn't care about the damage left in his wake.

Luckily, it is easy to love you!  I miss you, also!

Clare