Not Choosing Is Choosing

In a miraculous universe with an unlimited capacity to orchestrate events, how are we to make sense of bombings, shootings, mayhem, death, disease? What is it that seeks expression as violence, destruction, infliction of pain on innocents? How do we live in such a world? Do we want to live in such a world? Accept it? Transform it? How? 

What times we live in. How grippingly, compellingly real the appearances. Terry Cole Whittaker said, "Things fall apart before they fall together." We certainly are witness to that. Today, in Boston. Last week, in Connecticut, where the President said, "We must change." And yet, such resistance to change. "Be the change," said Gandhi. Is that enough? What is "enough?" Who determines "enough?" In the face of horrendous personal loss, their grief still palpable, eyes still wet with tears, but without rancor, Newtown parents lobby Congress, in the face of what seem to be insurmountable odds, for change. "Newtown chooses love," town banners proclaimed. How many of us must choose love, and for how long, before change can come? It is coming. Slowly. Painfully. At a price. Is our heart big enough to love one another? To create together a world that works for all, or is the task too big to try? 

In some way, individually and collectively, these questions are ours. We are here now. They are ours to address or deny, to contemplate or ignore, but both they, and we, are here now. Regardless of which we choose, we are choosing.

What I know to be true, from personal experience, is we are powerful beyond measure, whether we know it or not, acknowledge it or not, use it or not. I watched my son, Grant, do the "impossible" in the intensive care unit at UCLA while being treated for stage-four melanoma. He experienced all the side effects of his immunotherapy drug without taking the drug. The chills, fever, convulsive shaking, increased heart rate, vomiting and diarrhea were all compellingly "real." He did not want to be there. He was worried about his Dad, who was in another hospital nearby with a large blood clot in his heart. When the resident physician made her rounds the next morning, she asked Grant how he managed to have all the side effects of the drug without taking the drug. "I created that," he said simply, and she responded, "Wow. That's powerful." They released him from the hospital. That's how powerful we all are. We are the creators of our experience. What will we do with that power? What will we choose? Will we address or deny it? Contemplate or ignore it? Regardless of what we choose to do with it, we are choosing. Will we choose to believe in love, act from love, create from love, despite appearances, and continue to do so until we have a world that works for all? Will we let ourselves out of the hospital?