Doe, A Deer [View all]

[H2O Man]

“God, whose law it is that he who learns must suffer. And even in our sleep pain that cannot forget falls drop by drop upon the heart, and in our despair, against our will, comes wisdom to us by the awful grace of God.” -- Aeschylus


As the shock wears off, and the horror begins to settle in, it is human nature to try to “make sense” of the brutal murder of nine human beings in a church setting. We can see evidence of this on the television news, or on this forum. People express their views of guns, racism, if this was a hate crime and/or terrorism, the concept of “evil,“ other heinous murderers, and issues of mental illness. These are all valid issue to consider; discussing them can be helpful in coming to terms with this latest tragedy.

There are layers in our society that are dealing with this awful pain. My first concern, of course, is for the family members who lost a loved one. Then, like the ripples on a pond, going outward, the friends, neighbors, community members, and associates stretching across the country. And I do worry about this country -- the decay that we are witnessing, and how mindless violence so often targets Good People -- that my generation is handing down to the next.

I know the pain that this incident causes for so many people across this great land.

Even now, eight months after an off-duty law enforcement officer shot and seriously wounded my cousin, and killed his son, it is common for my cousin to tell me that he keeps reviewing the incident, and trying to make sense of it. He got a package of legal documents in the mail, which always serves to upset him; I drove down, and took them with me, to add to the growing file. I read through them yesterday morning, and there is nothing there that we have to respond to.

It’s difficult for me to sit down: the day before, I was in the lead as my dog Kelly and I took an early morning walk out to the pond; a tree that broke off in the night’s storm blocked our path, and as I prepared to climb over it, Kelly dashed up behind me, and jumped off my back, over the tree. While that was an amazing example of canine athleticism, it left me as limp as a damp rag, hanging across the tree’s trunk.

So I stood and looked out a window. There was a light rain coming down, though not enough to discourage a humming bird from drinking at some of the Rosa rugosa rubras (hedge roses). Few things in the Natural World fascinate me more than humming birds. In my mind’s eye, this wonderful creature was carrying on its duties, in between Aeschylus’s drops.

The next thing my eyes focused upon surprised me: a doe’s head stuck out from the hedge roses. She was about eight feet away from my window. For the past several years, although my dogs bark at literally anything else -- or, sometimes, nothing at all -- they pay little if any attention to the deer around here. She tilted her beautiful head, listened for a moment, and then began trimming my roses for me.

There is violence in the Natural World, and at times, it can seem cruel. But there is no “evil.” I have been in physical pain since Kelly flattened me, for example, but he meant my old bones no harm. A small-to-medium snapping turtle has taken up residence in my pond, and I will have to move it, as I am not in favor of it de-populating the schools of fish. (It has quickly learned to approach me when I feed the fish, and I wouldn’t mind if it only consumed fish food. But as much respect as I have for snapping turtles, I would prefer it live elsewhere. I am, at this point, too old to go in the pond to catch it -- they are much more difficult to handle in the water, especially if the dig into the mud -- and so I’ve brought my fishing net out. The turtle knows how to avoid it, thus far!)

I do believe that there is “evil,” though I do not subscribe to the belief if a demon with a red tail, horns, and a pitch-fork. I think it is an entirely human dynamic. I think it often involves groups of people -- though not necessarily at what I consider a conscious level. It can be found in the behaviors of an individual from that group. For example, I consider Dick Cheney to be evil; I do not consider his level of consciousness to be significantly higher than that of a snapping turtle -- and I am not attempting to be humorous in saying that. I view both as organic machines, though obviously, Cheney’s brain has a few more layers of gray matter.

Somewhere in that gray matter, human beings can hold the potential to do inhumane things. A sub-group gets associated with others who commit what, on the surface, appear to be similar crimes, in terms of utter brutality. Hence, we read some sincere people refer to this latest thug as being the same as Adam Lanza. While there are similarities, which may even include relationships with parents and family members, Lanza had much more evident signs of a serious and persistent axis 1 mental illness. Likewise, this fellow has been compared to Charles Manson; while both professed interest in sparking a “race war,” and had raging inferiority complexes, there aren’t many other significant similarities. And this turd is also being compared to Tim McVeigh; again, while both are correctly identified as terrorists, there are not other significant similarities.

What does overlap in all these instances -- including the hundreds and thousands of other, less well-known case like my cousin’s -- is that a bitter, angry man rode the energies of hatred -- his own, and his followers -- and committed violent crimes that killed and maimed innocent people.

There seems to be a lot of hatred in the United States these days. Too much, in fact. By no coincident, the levels of violence seem to rise at the same pace and level. I try not to “hate.” I do believe in forgiveness. Yet, being human, it is very hard for me to forgive the swine that shot my cousin and his son. I’m okay with my not being there, so long as I do not hate him. For, as my Good Friend, the “Hurricane” that transformed into Dr. Rubin Carter told me, “If you hate, you are a murderer.”

Peace,
H2O Man