Sep 27, 2018
This week in the news there was the tragic story of Wendy Martinez the jogger who was recently engaged and murdered just days after her engagement. Other news in the most recent news cycle involved the revelations of the Catholic Church’s cover up of 301 priests in Philadelphia accused of abusing thousands of minors over the last decades. Followed by news that a woman recently came forward to accuse a recent Supreme Court justice nominee of sexual assault over 30 years ago and just now coming forward.
At first glance, these stories seem to have no connection whatsoever. But I think all three of these stories expose on the one hand, the tolerated amorality of leaders depending on which side of the conservative/liberal left/right Republican/Democrat polar divide your own views may fall on and the selective outrage against the accused or the accuser depending on which side of the polar divide your tendencies fail.
How can so many people be outraged at a Supreme Court justice’s accused behavior and bat a different eye when the accused was/is a member of the clergy in the most powerful and hierarchical church in the United States? Or how can one be so quick to express outrage at priests accused and so quick to tolerate, overlook, make excuses for a judge being accused of similar behavior.
How can the accusers in one case be hailed as heroes for stepping forward? while the accuser in another case is hailed as only trying to derail this judge’s career and if the allegations were true why didn’t she come forward sooner?
All the stories is this recent news cycle discussed above, no doubt incited much emotions from sorrow, to anger and outrage, to disgust and bitterness.
Just three days after Wendy Martinez’ murder and hours after her daughter’s accused killer being taken into custody, Cora Martinez told mourners at a candlelight vigil for her daughter, “I feel relieved, in peace. I have forgiven him complete. My heart has no room for hate, resentfulness.”
“My heart has no room for hate. For resentfulness.”
Those nine words from a grieving mother of a beautiful daughter who was taken from this life so tragically and violently and quickly, shed so much light on how the selective outrage and anger incited by the media between the left and the right, the liberal and the conservative due to the polar divide growing in our country gets sown in the lives of all good people regardless of their political or social leanings.
No room for hate. Is it possible, when we allow ourselves to be so incited to fear or anger or rebuke or outrage against someone who doesn’t share a closer place with ourselves within the polarity that divides our society we have left some room for hatred in our hearts?
This imaginal prayer exercise will explore just that and more importantly shed God’s Divine light in the shadows of those areas we dare not inspect because they deal with the way we treat those so different than ourselves, so distant from ourselves within the human made polarity that defines our physical life here on earth in the cosmos? It is my hope that it will unfold within our conscious the divinely guided instruction of “what would love do” in this situation, helping us to further unfold the Divine Light of Love in our thoughts and in our lives and collectively with other light working souls illuminate the cosmos by expanding no room for hate consciousness throughout.