In light of the Charlottesville, VA and all the other places that have witnessed violence, we must heal the wounds that create hate.

The terrorism we worried about is here on U.S. soil. But the terrorists have not infiltrated our country, the terrorists are us. The terrorists are our neighbors and friends, not some suicide bomber from another country who came here to do us harm. They are someone we may know from our church, our town, our workplace. We’ve been looking in the wrong direction. We have been told to fear the wrong people, the wrong groups of people. We have been told to ostracize innocent people while the ones we thought were like us, who look like us, have jobs like us, go to the same stores, and churches as we do, they are the ones we should have been questioning – not those who are different from us. Those who appear different from us are just as scared as we are.

Now is the time for healing and to heal we must discover, uncover, recover – our raw gaping tender wounds.

We meet in our woundedness. We connect in our places of pain. We must now heal pain. We must now heal those deep-seated wounds.

The time is now to inventory the ‘why’ behind our beliefs and actions.

It’s time to take responsibility for our actions.

It’s time to love our brothers and sisters who are suffering, who hurt – it’s time to ask the deeper questions.

Asking what and why?

Why do they hate?

What happened to them that they feel unsafe?

What are they afraid of?

Who taught them hatred and why?

It’s time to heal centuries old wounds.

It’s time to heal generational wounds.

It’s time to heal family wounds.

It’s time to heal ancestral wounds.

It’s time to heal collective wounds.

Only through healing can the individual know peace.

When the individual knows peace, the community will know peace.

As each community knows peace it will spread like wild fire around the globe and all the world will know peace.

We must stop teaching hatred.

We must heal.

Love is the salve to heal the wounds.

Connection.

Communication.

Understanding.

Bringing light and shining it on those dark parts – the festering wounds within each of us. Exposing what needs healing. The places within that when touched make us jump back as though an electrical shock has pulsed through us – as though a raw nerve has been struck by the dentist drill.

We all, each of us, have them. The time to heal has come.

We must either heal or we will certainly destroy ourselves and all we hold dear.

“It’s not enough to have lived.
We should be determined to live for something.
May I suggest that it be creating joy for others,
sharing what we have for the betterment of personkind,
bringing hope to the lost and love to the lonely.”
— Leo Buscaglia