hunting the unforgiven

I find it wild and a little unsettling to see my country focusing on witch hunts as the ranks of the unforgiven grow, though the feeling is matched by the redemptive quality which forms in our cultural atmosphere each time someone's longheld secret is released and truth stands up finally to power.

This year we have witnessed several figures of great power in Hollywood and the District of Columbia and Manhattan blasted on Twitter and sued and denounced on mainstream media, and a few who have been stripped of power, in those cases where they are clearly (if not by forensic evidence than by the numbers of allegations and survivors) guilty of abusing and betraying the public trust by their actions.

How do I reconcile my mixed reaction to these media moments of horror and truth and compassion? I was once guilty of betraying public trust. Day by day, for several years, I have been working my way back to respectability. Society is giving me a chance to learn from my mistakes. A life cut up by addiction. I left myself behind and lost my mind.

Only god knows if I will make it tomorrow. My past is history. Today I do my best to participate in life and help out, bringing all I have learned with me wherever I go. Sharing. Caring.

What of these public figures whose pasts have caught up with them? Outcasted from society and unforgiven? Why does it disturb me to see them disfigured and disrobed from their fraudulent personas? Isn't this justice and long overdue?

I guess it's sad to watch people die that way, publicly, and sometimes their loved ones have to die alongside them. Meanwhile the victims of their crimes survive. It is unsettling to uncover what they have lived through, the survivors. I know because I am one, too.

I wonder where forgiveness fits in, when it comes to the unforgiven? I wonder if there's a certain hell where healing never starts? A tail end and no beginning. And how it came to be this way?

eyes that could be would be opened

The shelling was compelling, for though it destroyed many a home and many a life, it was something London (among others) learned to live with during the Allies war against Germany and the Axis. These times are long gone now. And yet someone somewhere being shelled shouts 'look at me! look at me!' (Palestine? Ukraine? Syria? Honduras? Yemen?). Shelling is a poor repeat performance of the human race. Let's disturb and destroy the perceived enemy's civilian population, by tossing from a cowardly distance and protected by armour (tank, missile, barracks), an explosive device into your family's sacred space. Peace swept off the table like porridge by the careless arm of a drunkard. Then the machines begin to pack up with ammunition and roll. The mechanism is diabolical for it cannot be stopped by a simple soldier with god and country behind him. Morality was annihilated in boot camp. The heart again subservient to the great mind. A human failing, repeated.

The shelling was compelling. How dare you say that? You must have grown up in an era of peace and flat-footedness. You must never have served your country!

True. And I say again, bearing witness to history and human nature; the shelling was compelling. For it woke up the civilians. The ones who lost their homes. The ones who knew the ones who lost their lives. The revolution began with loss. Set up an indispensable activism by proxy. Eyes that could be would be opened. The shelling was compelling. For all the pain and hurt and loss it caused. It caused a reaction that would change the world. It caused families who once had no interest in one another, other than typical mundane interaction, to become intimately involved with one another, and thus an extended family was realized. The potential was limitless. Just like any location any ghetto any land of lack or violence. The families become greater families become movements become love and compassion in motion.

The shelling was compelling. For by it, the best of human nature was yanked forefront into the world. The photographers flocked to the location and fired away. The photos would go down forever flat on coffee tables worldwide. The children would pan through the images and find out what their little hearts really can do. Seeing the decimated lands and homes. The sacred places where people came together to survive. Victims of attempted holocaust or genocide or declared war in the name of anything money could buy. Innocents. Angels. Hands reaching to embrace total strangers. Marches in the name of the sacred. Principles and spaces. Interlaces. What a dream. The shelling was compelling, only by the effect it produced which rippled around the world. Eyes that could be, would be opened.