breaking and entering

Alan woke me up at 1am Saturday, convinced that he heard someone trying to get into the house. I thought he must have heard a cat, and was over-reacting because he hadn't been sleeping well and wasn't feeling so good.

Today, I'm doing some laundry here at the apartment laundromat because my mother has the flu. I stood in the grass and looked at our windows. There are some footprints in the mud under our bedroom window, and part of the weather stripping has been pried up as if someone was trying to find a way to the latch. The weather stripping for one of the living room windows was laying in the mud, and had been pulled right off. I checked the second window, and part of the weather stripping had been pried off there as well.

Someone did try to break into the house.

I am completely freaked out, after the fact. I'm a bit mortified that I didn't take Alan more seriously the other night but I really did think he was just startled by a cat outside or something.

I wonder if I should talk to the office about having the weather stripping repaired. I haven't the faintest idea how to make the windows more safe. We keep the curtains and blinds down almost all the time.

compassion

The one thing I struggle with more than anything else in my life is remembering compassion for all people. Even those people who are hateful, self righteous monsters.

There are more than 600 comments on Cate's post. The number of people sharing their stories is amazing, as are the number of people who want to share her words with support groups and communities. So many people have been touched by one LJ post out of millions. Her message is so powerful that it is rippling out into the world, inspiring other posts and words and providing comfort out in the wide blue world. Here I am, writing a post.

I will never forget when the redneck kids busted out the windows of Casey's van when he wrote an editorial on tolerance. It never made any sense to me.

With anything that gets passed around on LJ, there are a few trolls. Given the subject being discussed, I'm surprised there aren't more trolls. I thought about listing their names here, but I suppose I really shouldn't court a flame war in the journals. The first one just made me laugh, because it was shouting "I don't believe this could happen cause it sounds unbelievable to me, I don't like the way you write therefore you must be an attention whore!" It was so absurd.

The next one was one of those pathetic creatures who claims to be "saved" and wants to tell us what awful people we are. I have an enormous difficulty taking people seriously when they profess to follow Christian teachings and then spout bigotry and hate out of the other side of their mouth. I hardly think such shameful two-faced behaviour can be considered Christian. Christ taught love and he gave his love to everyone, from his mother to Mary Magdalene. To see narrow minded people pervert his teachings and use them to justify some of the most incredible examples of hatred is just mind boggling.

Then there was the person who said, "I wish you had aborted your son." Whiskey Tango Foxtrot? First off, who thinks saying something like this is ever a good idea? Are there truly people out there who are so hateful and disgusting that they would rather see you dead than gay? Why yes, Virginia, sadly they do exist.

Here is my struggle. I wish I had some unlimited reserves of Christ-like compassion for all people. I wish I could be that generous. But I'm not. I am only human, and full of human frailty. I struggle not to hate these people, I struggle to remember that somewhere deep down in their twisted core that they too are human beings. It is so hard for me. I want to push them into a hole and put bullets in their skulls so the hate doesn't have a chance to breed and spread. I want to make sure they don't get the chance to poison their children with their corrupt hearts. I want to ship them all into the sun, so their evil can't continue. God help me, I would shoot them all if I thought I could make a difference. But then would the evil be in me, for not seeing them as human? In viewing them as monsters to be destroyed, do I make the same mistake that they do? I don't know. It's that puzzle about using the weapons of the enemy.

I try to consider them somewhat human. I try. I do not always succeed. I am not always a good person. I make the effort though, for what it is worth.