Soft raindrops pelt the skylights as I sit typing and my sons sleep. Blessed. An aromatic cup of coffee at my right, cats munching away on their food and the windows still dark, no rays of sun fading them to day. The sun likely will hide today behind clouds and rain showers. I cleaned the kitchen from last night’s late dinner, although a couple of boxes of Kraft macaroni and cheese – embellished with extra cheddar cheese – and some curly Q fries in the deep frier are not a bragging dinner; but we all agreed that going out for food was unnecessary. Unassuming comfort food consumed while watching the Boston police bring the five day ordeal of the Marathon bombing to an end. But will the terror end? I didn’t feel like Sandy Hook or Aurora or the shooting of Congressman Giffords was an attack on me, on “us”. But something about the flavor of this week since the Boston marathon bombings has felt like a knot in my stomach – in our collective guts as a nation. With the other mass shootings, it is obviously a sociopath acting in a location far from me. I have had the good fortune and random benefit to not live in the location of a sociopath (if we exclude Ted Bundy and Danny Rollings). But the marathon bombings makes me realize there could be a coming wave or many waves of hateful terrorists seeking to dismantle our homeland peace. The shadow of September 11th doesn’t quite reach me where I am at. While I know vividly all the events of that day, I don’t live in the shadow of the phantom World Trade Center and I don’t drive by the patched Pentagon. But, I live in town with a large university, right on a major interstate highway, within 50 miles of a nuclear power plant as the crow (and nuclear fall out) flies. And this week, I have felt the itching of fear at the back of my brain.
Peace is what matters right? Peace is our goal? Except I can’t control hatemongers or terrorists and they have the capacity to steal my peace and peace of mind. So, I think, what do I have control over? I have control over MY heart. I can chose to love and love grandly and without bounds or dimensions. I can be generous and extend my hand in comfort and acceptance. I can welcome into my home, my heart and my life. And I can do it unconditionally in accordance to the Lord and without reservations. for I cannot control peace. The word passion derives from the Latin word passio, which means suffering and submission. It refers to Christ’s suffering which he only experience because he became man. Man is meant to suffer….to live with suffering, with PASSION. I am no masochist, but the sublime reward of His suffering was Eternal life and a ransom paid for me. So am I not to accept my own PASSIO? Live my life with passion and walk through the grueling suffering and fear and……terror? I can’t control the grinding machine that eats up this world, but I can love and live my life with great passion.