| Click to set custom HTML | I just read a book called, "I Shall Not Hate: A Gaza Doctor's Journey on the Road to Peace and Human Dignity" by Izzeldin Abuelaish. The author, a doctor, watched his three daughters and niece were blown apart in a bombing of their apartment in the Gaza Strip. This book is his reaction to that loss. At the bottom of the well of suffering, there is the decision: Do I retaliate? Do I slaughter those who have hurt me and my family? Am I honor bound to seek and obtain revenge? Stories of heroes and villains, stories of bravery and overcoming evil, are part of the marrow of our bones. Good vs evil. We want to be on the side of good. |
Palestine vs. Israel. The land wherein they are killing each other over stories of men who taught love. What if that's wrong? What if that itself is evil? What if the right response is not to fight for good and conquer evil....what if the right response is the preservation of human dignity?
Human dignity arises sometimes. It arises from intense sorrow. There is a moment, when the human being can no longer stand unrelenting grief (for whatever reason), and a feeling of dignity arises: Human Beings were not meant to suffer so, that one needs to relent, ne needs to again feel worth - at least the worth inherent in the biological form of human. The divinity accorded with that being.
And Dignity says, "Not again. It is below me as a human being to engage in ____ again."
Sometimes it's drinking, smoking, drugs - sometimes it's emotional - greed, anger, hate. But, there are examples of people who's human dignity has arisen and have caused them to refute their habits.
And with that human dignity, which is just compassion for the self, there is a re-categorization of the suffering. Care of the living, tending to the living wounds surpasses the urge to mourn, to revenge. Life reassert's itself. And human dignity proclaims the right to live in peace. The right to be content and prosperous. The right to love self and other.
The right to say, "I will not, shall not hate again."
Human dignity arises sometimes. It arises from intense sorrow. There is a moment, when the human being can no longer stand unrelenting grief (for whatever reason), and a feeling of dignity arises: Human Beings were not meant to suffer so, that one needs to relent, ne needs to again feel worth - at least the worth inherent in the biological form of human. The divinity accorded with that being.
And Dignity says, "Not again. It is below me as a human being to engage in ____ again."
Sometimes it's drinking, smoking, drugs - sometimes it's emotional - greed, anger, hate. But, there are examples of people who's human dignity has arisen and have caused them to refute their habits.
And with that human dignity, which is just compassion for the self, there is a re-categorization of the suffering. Care of the living, tending to the living wounds surpasses the urge to mourn, to revenge. Life reassert's itself. And human dignity proclaims the right to live in peace. The right to be content and prosperous. The right to love self and other.
The right to say, "I will not, shall not hate again."
RSS Feed
