A good man is a man who would love you,
who would, at the least, forgive you.
He would look into your face and see the visage
of his Maker there and hold that too dear to lose;
would understand that you are the creature
of forces you could neither deny or command
and would wonder how you could do
what you just did. But with that cordite in the air
and all this blood everywhere
and their screams still screaming in my ear,
I know I am not that man—
so I hate you even more.
And pain in a blind eye’s a double hurt.
Rúmí, The Mathnaví, I.
Quoted by ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, The Secret of Divine Civilization, p.34
It is the day after another mass shooting. A day when, again, we offer our prayers and love to the victims and their families. A day when, again, we search for understanding and why. A day when, again, we wonder why the only answer is misdirection and empty rhetoric. A day when, again, we hope that there will be some substantive change, although we know there will not. A day when, again, I come face-to-face with my inability to forgive such evil and to let go of my anger, and what that means about me as a spiritual being.
Thank you for reading Pain in a blind eye. I humbly appreciate your visiting the Book of Pain. I have disabled the ‘Like’ button for this post— there is nothing to like here. As always, I look forward to your comments.
The photograph was taken a few days ago in Cranston, RI. To see my photography blog, please visit the Book of Bokeh.
john
Photograph, poem and notes © John Etheridge; all rights reserved. The poem and accompanying notes are licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 Unported License. This applies to all original written work found on this site, unless noted otherwise. The attribution claimed under the license is: © John Etheridge, https://bookofpain.wordpress.com. The photograph is not licensed for use in any way without the expressed consent of its creator.
the Book of Pain 