Who started it.
May be a wrong question.
It’s easy, short sighted and shorted lived – a response.
It ends in crucification of a single.
And isn’t that the bigger issue?
This “singular” polarized view.
When did it start? May be more insightful an exploration
For all of us.
It clearly didn’t start with someone making a decision or picking a gun
When .. then.
Did it start when someone was born, or how?
When someone was denied
When someone was shut out
When someone was shamed, or blamed?
Or did it start when someone was not listened to …
Or ridiculed
Or was told they were not enough..somehow.
Or didn’t belong.
Or was it the seeing of someone else’ helplessness
Or the unjust pain of another.
Or just feeling the heat while reading the history lessons.
The wars coming alive in in the mind.
Or the bottled anger against what was told that was Unacceptable.
Maybe it was the forced black shoes one had to wear in school.
Maybe it was those forcibly levied decisions about clothes, friends, vocation.
With good Intent. Always the damn “good intention”
Or just the way the boys threw stones at the homeless man.
Or picked at the lame dog
Of course. Just for fun!!!
or the putting up of a brave face to hide the tears
or the ringing of the hurting words.., over and over again
What…
When
How
There was no one single moment OR a Person.
But ..
The Choice of peace can be made
Now
In this single moment.
If we MUST Choose, there are choices..
The choice to be Kind.
The Choice to see humanity as one
The choice to forgive
The Choice to pray for People NOT nations.
The choice to not let hurts ..hurt more
The choice is to have faith.
The choice to retell the Old story in a New way
It’s time to pause to see and realise, when we see the face of a crying child,
Compassion arises..long before we assign, nationality, gender and other labels.
In THAT pause…lies our hidden humanity.
Nobody wins in a war.
It’s time we look at our inner wars..
And the choices we have..
In this very precious moment.
I have faith in the collective sigh
Of humanity
Still.
I wonder…
As I sit with all this.
What if we had placed ‘Tug of Peace’, as children Instead.
War is a Story…waiting to be re-written and healed
In all ouf us.
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