But Actions Still Speak Louder...

My heart seems to be breaking a lot these days. And that's a good thing, I think. There's still hope if my heart can break.

It means my humanity is still in tact. It means anger and violence isn't the last measure of who we have become. It means that there is still love and hope in this world.

And that is good. Because more than anything else these days, the violence being perpetrated within the Middle East is breaking my heart. 

I am currently doing research for a novel. The topic requires that I alternate my research between the Bible and the Koran. While I have long known that Christians consider the rift between Islam and Christianity to trace back to the division of Abraham's sons, Ishmael (with Hagar) and Isaac (with Sarah), I recently learned that Muslims believe the same thing. The difference is, Muslims believe it was Ishmael that Abraham was to sacrifice, not Isaac as the Christians believe. Therefore, Ishmael is considered the true and rightful progenitor of God's people, not Isaac as is the Judeo-Christian tradition. Two sides of the same coin.

The basis for fifteen centuries of war and cultural mistrust.

I have never been accused of being reserved with my opinions. I most likely disagree politically and religiously with about fifty percent of people I encounter on a daily basis, including members of my own family. Yet, I have never once had the urge to take out my machete and lop off someone's head to prove my authority in, no matter the import. Nor have I ever come close to acquiring a level of insolence and rage (or devotion and loyalty, for that matter) that would inure me to the idea that such hand-crafted violence is a viable means to an end.

Let me make this clear: unless we've just entered the zombie apocalypse, beheading someone in the name of Allah is wrong. Period. 

Such actions are supposed to be scarce within the realm of human activities, so scarce that the perpetrators are viewed as emotional aberrations, sadistic individuals who stand apart from the general population. Yet lately, there appears to be a steady stream of hapless young men (and now to my great sadness, young women) who are literally seeking their own moral damnation by embracing this philosophy of violence and rage.

Yes, I know Islam has been hijacked by a bunch of charismatic zealots who are now bent on creating a world-dominating caliphate that wasn't in the original considerations of any self-respecting moderate Muslim. Yes, I've got it. You know what? I don't care.

Not after having to stomach footage of stonings, and beheadings, and so-called honor killings, all in the name of a religion that once produced some of the greatest mathematicians, astrologers, writers, artists, and inventions of the ages. It sickens me that such beauty and poetry and greatness is being erased both within Islam and before the rest of the world by this bloodthirst of the wicked few, and that too many within Islam stand by and let it happen.

These men and women who have chosen this dark path are dedicating their lives to revenge upon an enemy that is largely imagined. The reasons are many, but always the same. Such a reason is an excuse, a cop-out, a needless fury. Instead of seeking understanding and crafting lives full of promise and hope, they bury their souls in carnage and death. To what end?  

I am have the unique privilege of raising two children not born of me, but whom I carried within me for years before I met them. I know what it means to cross the globe in search of God's greatest treasure, to find your meaning in a child's eyes you have never before met but have always known. I know how unlikely the odds are, that among the billions, you find the one (or in my case, two) that was truly meant for you. Your child. Your soul. Your everything. 

They have always been, and will always be, my truest love.

But what if they had never existed? What if someone else had made a choice, a horrible choice, before I had a chance to arrive and bring each of them to where they were destined to be. What then? Would I have gone on searching? Or lived empty, forever?

But someone didn't make that choice. Instead, a selfless choice was made. A painful sacrifice, for which I am the eternally grateful beneficiary.  

We cannot know the impact our actions have on others, but we can at least understand that they do have impact. The more severe the act, the more severe its swath of destruction. Death is only momentarily visited on the dying, but those that remain (both the persecutors and the persecuted) will suffer well beyond that fateful moment. 

Like the Twilight Zone episode: Push this button, someone you don't know will die, and you'll receive a million dollars. So you push the button. Then the man hands over the million, takes the device from your grasp, and he promises to bring it to someone you don't know. Suddenly, to our deepest horror, the game is understood.

Our actions toward others determine our own fate.

In the end, the tyranny of terror won't hold. The persecuted will eventually rally. What may seem to the executioner to be submission is actually the stillness that foretells a gathering strength.

They will rise. They always rise. Then more blood will water the earth. Some will be deserving of their fate, but many more will be simply snatched up in the wash of retaliation and counter-retaliation. A vast and terrible dance played out against the promise of what might have been, if only one, or another, or yet another had chosen to act differently.

And so my heart will break. Over and over. Again and again.

The Power of Words

In the first version of my novel, Among the Grackle, one of the main characters was sitting at her desk bemoaning the conversation taking place outside her office door. "Words. Words. Too many words...talk less, do more!"

After seeing it in print, I realized how (at best) ironical or (at worst) hypocritical the statement was for someone attempting to make a living as a writer, and daily utilizes far more words than my rightful share (if such things can be cosmically measured).

I love words. I love their textures and nuanced meanings. I love their cadence and flow. I love how they can be at once general and specific to every situation, how their presentation can simultaneously discern and construct meaning relative to any context.

I love how (to paraphrase author Kevin Powers) what is thought is never quite what is said and what is said is never quite what is heard.

Our entire understanding of every other human being, our communication with every soul we encounter throughout our lifetime, exists only in this bounding back and forth between those two chasms. 

Yet, within those two chasms stands our appreciation for every great piece of literature, music, and work of art; every romance we have ever shared; every tragedy we have ever experienced. Within those two chasms also lives the misunderstandings of the entire human race, from the smallest spat between lovers to the genocide of millions. Words, both spoken and silent, are the power that drives actions both good and evil. 

Which is why we may try to curtail their usage from time to time: because words, whether understood or misunderstood, are powerful. Turning love sonnets into a U R HOT text is a most recent example of humans developing a common "cultural conversation," wherein we attempt to say just enough, but not too much, for fear that too much is, well, too much. 

But it never works for long.

Even texting, which began as a series of alphabetical abbreviations that aggravated every language aficionado on the planet (pardon my alliteration), re-evolved into a medium for having full-on conversations with the recent generations of smart phones.

Suddenly those sassy little devices were auto-correcting for actual words! Sprightly novellas could now pour forth from my fingertips! Brevity? You're kidding, right?  

Some of us rightly suspected it would happen; that even a technology designed for succinctness would expand it's original manifest. Because the thirst for language and conversation, in all its imperfectness is deeply rooted in the human heart and psyche.

It's how we connect. It's how we move forward.

We talk, we write, and eventually, we listen.