Even Evil
Even evil is part of the Great Green Heart of the World. Those who would destroy life, unashamed, live in the beneficence of the earth. The sun never turns away from them, the flowers never judge. The trees don’t uproot and flee.
We are wired to have opinions, puny humans. A man who murders baby elephants for sport may sit next to you in church. Would you shake his hand? Because I’m curious, because it’s fascinating (a bit too dangerous, in retrospect), I’ve researched human evil. Don’t you wonder why someone would *choose* to live in darkness? We’ve all passed down dark roads, lived through dark times, but to plunk your flag in that black camp and *live* there? Why? How can you live against the Light? How can you even call that living?
I wanted to help, somehow. Spread a little light from my Love Camp. Sure I’m naive, but from my reading chair, it didn’t seem that difficult. Enter our newest neighbor. She hates my garden. First clue. She hates mirrors, and threw my plastic dragon (placed there as an experiment. My bad. Her response confirmed my suspicions, and told me I shouldn’t purposely provoke her. (Poke at the devil at your own expense).
Wanting to help heal evil, like wanting to feed the hungry and save the whales, is harder in the trenches than the idea in your living room. I got sucked in. Even my husband noticed and complained. The ego, which deemed me hale and hearty, nearly pushed me off my chair. “Go get ’em, Tiger!” (it was surprisingly confident) but it didn’t take long to realize I’d bitten off more than I could chew. The court was no help, the property managers no help, the police, after 4 times at our house, began to blame me for my neighbor’s nonsense. The ego became hateful, which made the devil happy (you may take issue with the words ~ God, devil, ego, I claim poetic license in examining my beliefs).
Turns out I was mistaken. Evil is a force (Why do we love ‘Star Wars’ movies?), a power, and your mind thinks it can reckon with the idea, but it’s your heart, thrown into battle and I’d bet a lot of money on my heart (it’s a big one) but I can’t stand to see it bleeding. The heart, living with blood, in blood, sees blood as natural but the little girl who saw her father, drunk with rage, bloody-ing her loved ones (never her), still can’t stand the sight of it (the boy who threw a rock at Scotty’s head, blood pouring out, I wanted to do that to *him*). So the murderous rage, the blood of my childhood, sponged up in my heart, or my soul, or in a corner of my brain, all these years later, has caused my un-doing. I came undone in hatred.
Truth is, I don’t know how to heal or help the evil. It’s God’s work, and if you sign up to do battle, be prepared to weep and gnash your teeth. And when you taste your own blood, offer it as a sacrifice to Peace.
LBM 3/3/2019
