Why?

I just read Milkweed by Jerry Spinelli, a touching fiction about Nazi-occupied Warsaw. It is a story of an orphan who lives in the streets of Warsaw, stealing food for himself and other orphans just trying to survive.
The story unfolds with the cunning and baffling atrocities inflicted on the Jews during a horrific time in our history.

I realize this is a fictitious book; however, the happenings and the treatment of the Jews is factual. In reading books about the Holocaust of the Jews and Rwanda, I am shocked at what one human being can do to another. It is the slow seeping of separation, defiling and dehumanization into the souls of people.

When we allow ourselves to listen to and be around racism, dehumanization, derogatory comments about a group of people, we are setting ourselves up for the unthinkable. We become the monsters, we fear. We begin saying and doing the unthinkable. History repeats itself.

We have been listening to the media and to the extreme fundamentalist about the "Muslims" being evil, being vile, inhuman, "the enemy." All of these labels, separate us from them. They close our minds and our hearts to the preciousness and the oneness of our humanity. In so doing, we allow atrocities to befall onto innocent people.

Isn't this what happened to Jesus. One day he is the hero, the next the crowd turns on him and he becomes the hunted, the beaten, the crucified.

How many times do I fall into the trap of gossip, degrading another person, all the while rationalizing that "We're different, I'm not like them, They deserve what they get . . ." I am guilty of the of propagating the same behaviors and mindsets of those whom have participated in ethnic-cleansing.

With this awareness, I am called to be responsible and to help cleanse the world of such thinking and belief systems. I do this by using the Ho'oponopono Prayer for Healing as found in Zero Limits by Joe Vitale and Ihaleakela Hew Len, PhD.

Divine creator, father, mother, son, [daughter] as one . . . If I, my family, relatives, and ancestors have offended you, your family, relatives, and ancestors in thoughts, works, deeds and actions, from the beginning of our creations to the present, we ask your forgiveness. . . Let this cleanse, purify, release, cut all the negative memories, blocks, energies, and vibrations, and
transmute these unwanted energies to pure light . . . And it is done.

This prayer opens my heart to love through forgiveness all of humanity and allows me to experience the Oneness of us all.