Be careful what you drink!

Dylann Roof is not crazy. What he did is. He slaughtered innocent black people who had welcomed him into their discussion group last week. He was the only white person there. They thought he came to discuss. He knew that he had come to kill. According to believable reports, Roof was a member of a white supremacist group that has a stated goal to kill black people. Apparently that is covered by freedom of speech.

Roof is not crazy. He was simply following the logic of the group to which he belonged. The group is a garden of hatred.  Kill black people. He took his belief to heart. He is being cheered, I'm sure, by his fellow believers who hope that others will follow the dictates of  conscience inebriated by the draught of hate, and do likewise.

People drink from the draught they choose. Christianity, Islam, Judaism, Communism, Buddhism, Atheism. There are divisions and subdivisions, offshoots and inbreeding, from all of them. Extreme versions of any of these ideologies often deny others the right to live, think, speak, even breathe, eat, or drink; they deny a right to an education, insist on inequality, supremacy for the few. They kill.

What I would like to see is something simple to happen. Thinking people, explore the destiny of the path of your chosen ideology. Where does it lead in this life? I am not talking eternity here. No one knows what happens in eternity. We believe or guess at that. It is important to know the logic of our path in this life. How does our chosen ideology allow us to interact with others on the journey who may be different from us. The common denominator: we are all on the journey. We were born naked. We go into the ground with nothing. What do our choices mean as we speak, act, live, love along the way. Bottom line…beware the draught of hate.

Nightmare

I reached for the kit. It had dozens of little figurines in it, three or more littles statues of several different chess pieces, kings, queens, knights, bishops, pawns, rooks. It was unreal. The instructions on the test stated that I had to figure out the probability of several of these little people to pop up together under each set of circumstances that would be described in the first ten questions of the exam.

It was a standardized test. I was already way behind in the timing because of some irregularities that I demanded the test proctors remedy, and that they report to the testing organization, a branch of the SAT. I was so screwed. After they distributed the test packets, the area where I was to enter my personal information on the answer sheet was ripped off and lost. My question to the proctor- Where should I enter the information. Can I have a new packet? No, there are just enough for the candidates in the room. Write it on a little piece of paper and staple it to the place where it will go. But the testing company will just throw it away, it won’t fit into their scanning machines. Do it that way. I want you to report this as an irregularity so they know the problem and that I did the test. Yeah, right.  I was wasting precious time that I needed to do the test. I’ll do it and take care of making sure they handle it after I’m finished. I returned to my place, my chair was gone. The others were working diligently on their test. I saw a huge King James(LeBron) oak chair that I managed to lug to my place. I opened my booklet, prepared my answer sheet by printing my name along the margin, stray marks that would probably invalidate the paper, and invalidate me. I read the directions about the little people. One of the other test takers sneered as he shoved the box of little people in my direction. Then he returned his eyes to his paper fearful that he might be accused of cheating. As I opened the box that was tightly wrapped in cellophane for security, I felt frustrated...so much to do...they are so far ahead… they know what they are doing...

I woke up to a sunny day and laughed out loud. My interpretation....feeling inadequate.