A day to remember

Sunday night was truly a shock. After working a long day, I came home to waiting for the president's speech on the attack mission which killed Osama Bin Laden amongst 40 people. It couldn't help but sadden me to see people rejoicing in his death. Although he himself was a killer, hate breeds hate while love conquers all.

Is this an odd coincidence that Hitler was killed 66 years ago to date?

Several things bothered me. It seemed fishy to me that the body wasn't pictured such as has it had been in the past for other super villians such as Che Guevarra or Saddam Hussein. Also it was claimed that he would be buried in a traditional Muslim manner yet he was buried at see, a practice Muslim's don't follow. Not to mention the barbaric celebration of death was disheartening. Being a pacifist, I will never understand the desire to be violent towards others. Ever since I could remember as a young child, I have always been saddened by war.

Violence doesn't make sense to me especially since I grew up with a somewhat religious back ground in Christianity and then leaned towards Buddhism, and humanist beliefs. Every where I seemed to search for spiritual guidance, it always pointed to the practice of non violence.

Matthew 5:44 reads,
"But I tell you: Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you"

Ghandi is quoted, "I object to violence because when it appears to do good, the good is only temporary; the evil it does is permanent."

Martin Luther King, Jr said, "The ultimate weakness of violence is that it is a descending spiral, begetting the very thing it seeks to destroy. Instead of diminishing evil, it multiplies it. Through violence you may murder the liar, but you cannot murder the lie, nor establish the truth. Through violence you may murder the hater, but you do not murder hate. In fact, violence merely increases hate. So it goes. ... Returning hate for hate multiplies hate, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars. Darkness cannot drive out darkness: only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate: only love can do that."

“Peace cannot be achieved through violence, it can only be attained through understanding.”
Ralph Waldo Emerson.

"Heroism on command, senseless violence, and all the loathsome nonsense that goes by the name of patriotism - how passionately I hate them!"
Albert Einstein

A day like that helps you forget how people in Alabama just lost their homes due to the wrath of nature and those who were spared still have no power and are suffering. Perhaps you forgot how much gas was per gallon while BP made a whopping $6,079,000,000 the first quarter if this year. Maybe you considered that the cuts in program's like WIC, Planned Parenthood, PBS, and program's that help the less fortunate was worth it in order to increase our military budget protect our "homeland peace". While terrorism is a horrible thing, so are the other main killer's of the America public - heart disease, cancer, diabetes, AIDS, etc. My hopes are for peace and that compassion will spread.