Kalamazoo Shootings

On Saturday night, February 20, there was a mass shooting here in Kalamazoo. Now the violence has struck in our own streets. It is heartbreaking. We are stunned and don’t yet know who the victims are. In aftermath we, like everyone else in the world, must now choose between caring for each other and striking out at each other.

Charles Dickens began his novel A Tale of Two Cities with the sentence, “It was the best of times and the worst of times.” What is profound about this is that every era, every generation, every day, is the best of times and the worst of times. And it is up to us to choose, as those before us, between love and fear.

If we look at humanity as one global body, then, like in every human body, there are healthy cells and toxic cells. And health in the world abounds when there are more healthy individuals than toxic ones.

And every time we meet in kindness and truth, we strengthen the immune system of the global body. Everything is connected and therefore, everything matters. And every time you strengthen a heart, you lessen fear and violence somewhere in the world.

And this is the challenge of our time: to strengthen our hearts and to lessen our fear and violence. We are all in this together, no matter where we live.