These children are like any of us, caught in struggles we don't understand. One such struggle -- the estrangement of our body from our spirit -- finds our body irked by the spirit's piousness, the spirit scandalized by the body's joy.
So the children, you, me, our gentle selves, pack our pajamas, wishing. If only Mommy could bend, just a little bit, to see what Daddy's talking about. If only Daddy could listen and try something Mommy's way. If only they could get along. If only.
Mom and pop turn to us in the midst of another royal ballyhoo. Some absurd look about us makes them drop their scorecards, ink smudging their rude cheeks. Oh. The children. We almost forgot.
Let me tell you a story about my spirit body split. Like you, perhaps, I want to know how I feel about the boy who shot the innocents last week. Do I hate him? Is it pity? Disgust? Rage? Sorrow?
I feel an ancient sorrow for the people he killed. But when I try to take the pulse of my response to the killer, I feel...
Some have compared the shooter to a suicide bomber. Both are ideologues for whom human life has no value. Both chill me to the bone, but there is no bone. No marrow. No sinew. No blood. In the face of their murderous certainty, I feel only ice white fear.
Spiritual purists and worshipers of the senses are doomed to everlasting strife. Both define themselves by their martyrdom. The body politic finds the effort of self-discipline unconscionably harsh. The extremist extinguishes the sloppiness of hedonistic culture with a bullet or a bomb.
We, abandoned children, make no sense of our emotions, benumbed by tummies so damn full, no butterflies alight there. Traumatized by spirits that have lost the urge to play.
