Let Love Prevail

Featured image by: Philip Del Carmen

Some things are too profoundly important for words. Yet writers feel compelled to search, bang their heads, wrench their hands, gnash their teeth, cry out to the heavens. We need to express ourselves because we aren’t just speaking for our own anguished souls….we are attempting to give voice to humanity. Not because we feel big enough to take on the task, but because we feel so small under the collective pain of humanity.

These same impulses befall all artists. Regardless of the medium, we struggle to transcend the limits of communication, to somehow pour the emotions we cannot contain into polished bits of matter and energy, to present them to our fellow humans as if to say, “I feel this. I know you feel this, too. We are not alone.”

(Image by: Lee Atwell)

In the early morning hours of 12 June, 49 people were slaughtered by a single, darkened soul. A soul twisted by self loathing turned outwards. A soul obsessed with destroying that which haunted him, that which he could not face or understand. A soul who chose a gun with which to communicate. A soul sadly not unique in his need to cry out, “I feel this. Why don’t you feel this, too? I cannot bear to be alone!”

(Image by: Lisa L Peters)

Today, someone will die at the hand of hatred. Today, people will suffer unbearable cruelty because they somehow trigger the excruciating rage in those who torment them. It happened yesterday. It will happen tomorrow. It happens every single day.

(Image by: Lee Atwell)

There are no words that can change this, no images which have the power to halt evil in its tracks. There is only one thing in this world that can transform senseless violence, intolerance, vitriolic furry and darkness. It is the truest of truths, the simplest and most basic essence at the core of every one of us. It is love.

(Image by: Oola Cristina)

Every day we makes choices about how we show up in the world. We are mirrors for each other. We reflect back and forth. And the dramas which unfold can be tales of unspeakable horror or they can be stories of beauty and kindness. The ripples from the choices we make reverberate endlessly, in ways we cannot predict. We are constantly pre-shaping history. And so, with no pretense or guile, I vow to choose my weapons of communication carefully. I beg you all to do the same.

(Image by: Ocean Morisset)