GothiqueFae’s Weblog

Shadows In The Rain « TheNorEaster

So I just got done reading this post and it took my breath away and gave me hope like you wouldn’t believe, finally I find that there are people who are able to see beyond appearances to God’s Grace that has the potential to exist in all of us.  My views on this started…oh I don’t know, probably around the beginning of college a few years ago when I declared myself to be…………Goth.  And Christian.  And I started surfing around on the web looking up exactly that, Christian Goths and found some breathtaking and beautiful ideas and people and I began to realize an interesting thing.

As the visual people we tend to be we have the penchant then to judge people based on how they look or act.  We never give them the chance to show us who they really are.  We see and we write them off, either as hopeless and lost or as worthy of our time.  Either way they get written off.  We put them in boxes and in so doing put ourselves and our God in a box.  It really started to eat at me, especially as I donned black clothes and corsets and people looked at me differently.  I started to think about what they would do if they found out that this little Goth was also a Christian.  Well, that’s fairly easy, most of them would probably think I wasn’t serious about it, that it was just something I grew up doing so that’s what I called myself; Christian.  I may not always dress in black, but I still consider myself to be Goth.  And Christian.  And anymore I’m tickled pink (or rather black :D ) by the thought of how scandalized some people would be to learn that I was either and both of those things.

Anyway as I began to realize these tendecies of others (and myself) it led me down an interesting thought path.  One day as I was wrestling with the oft asked, never satisfactorially answered question of why bad things happen to us, I came to a startling thought (I won’t say conclusion, because this question will never have a conclusion ’till we are dead) - we only ever get a one-inch view of the world.  We don’t get to see the BIG picture.  We don’t get to see how ever single action of every person ever acted in the past, present or future are weaved together to create a picture so amazing that if we were given just a glimpse of it while we were still alive we’d go blind. 

I don’t like it when people say “everything happens for a reason,” I think it’s a trite and ‘canned’ answer and despite what the speaker may intend does not, in fact, give anyone hope.  So, although what I’m saying sounds remarkably like that it is far from it.  Shit happens.   And it sucks and it hurts and it doesn’t make sense.  It may never make sense (until we are dead).  I guess what I’m saying is…Don’t judge people because of how they look or act or whatever because you don’t know them and you don’t know what beauty they are contributing to The Picture or, by judging them, what (…) you are contributing.

So yeah, I hope you don’t mind me linking to you NorEaster.  And to anyone else……keep being you.

This is what hatred does, is this what we want?

http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20080406/wl_afp/franceracismislamgraves

 Is this what we want to become - a nation of people who are so afraid of anything different that we wind up hating it and hurting others.  Fear leads to anger, anger leads to hatred, hatred leads to suffering (courtesy of Yoda and Spielberg).  It’s true.  This atrocity was done out of fear and anger and hatred of a small extremist sect of one religion.  These were heroes.  They gave their lives for their country out of love and this is how they are repaid?  They should have given these graves the highest honor and respect.  Any and every soldier who breathes his last on the battlefield is a hero, regardless of his religion.

My heart expresses agony every time I think about 9/11, I still shed tears when I watch television specials on it or read stories about the survivors, I shed tears (pratically sobbed) when I watched the movie about the flight that went down outside of Washington D.C., those passengers were heroes, I still honor those brave men and women of the firefighter and police ranks who were the first in those buildings as well as the ones who responded at the Pentagon.  BUT I DO NOT HATE OR FEAR MUSLIMS OR THE ISLAM RELIGION!!!!!  I never did and I pray that I never do.

The things that took place at that gravesite in the above article should not have happened.  People forget to draw distinctions between our “enemies” and our friends.  They forget that they shouldn’t judge others.  They forget that being a certain way doesn’t make that person “like everyone else.”  I hate blanket judgements and I extremely dislike it when people who have made blanket judgements decide to “teach them a lesson.”

The only lesson we need to learn is Love.