ernest trova
You believe God forgives. Yeah. God is done with it, already forgiven the guilts eating you up. If you believe forgiveness is important, learn to forgive yourself. It's only you holding yourself in the bog of self-blame. God is done with it. It's the same as nothing at all. Karma is done with it. Whatever your return would be for all you blame yourself for, you've already had the returns and didn't recognize them. Let it rest. Self talk. This is how I talk to myself when I'm feeling blue from memories in childhood, the neighbor's cat I killed not meaning to. I continue to feel sorrow from the memory. It brings to mind a scene from a Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor movie, the Sandpiper, 1965. There was a young boy under ten, or so I suppose from poor memory over half a century. Daddy gave him a .22 rifle for maybe a birthday present. They went outside with it, a young deer stepped into range, paused for a Hollywood Bambi pose, the kid pulled the trigger. The deer fell down dead. Miracle shot. The kid was mortified. He preferred the deer alive, didn't know he was putting an end to its life. The kid was me.
It is surely something I came into this lifetime with. All the way back to first memories I never wanted to kill anything. I have killed, and every time, mostly roadkill, it tormented me. I appeal to the Higher whatever to take care of the soul of the cat, dog, coon, squirrel, possum that ran under my tires. If there is a chance to avoid one, I will, but there are times, like day before yesterday, a rabbit darted from the side of the road between my front wheel and back wheel. A casualty of the modern world. By end of next day the crows and buzzards will have had a snack, only a spot left on the road until the rain washes it away. In an unavoidable situation, I remind myself it was a quick dying and the bunny will feed several crows and a possum or two. I killed a coon with intent once, and swore to self I'll never do it again. Killed a dog once with intent and swore off of killing anything ever again with intent. I must accept it when a cat darts under a tire, but I have control over intent.
My own belief that the living beings around me are supremely precious made me feel like I came from outer space through the years of growing up. I grew up into a world where killing is the ideal. Disasters are measured by body count. Killing is continuous on television, the most intense drama. The man that can kill and feel nothing is American superman. I came of age in the time of the draft, mandatory training to kill for God and country. By that time I'd had it with God and didn't believe my country anymore. I didn't want to kill anybody and didn't see any reason behind the military's desire to make me kill except proof of evolution. I, personally, suspect it has to do with gross misinterpretations of the Hebrew Wars in the Old Testament preached to army boys during the Indian Wars, which they fought as though they were reenacting holy script. I believe a case can be made for the Hebrew Wars the mythology of the white man's approach to killing Indians, genocide. God's will. King David, a middle-eastern war lord, was the Genghis Khan of his place and time. David was God's favorite and it was important that Jesus be a descendant of David by bloodline.
jean arp
I can't help but take from the Hebrew Wars that God says genocide is the way to go, kill em all, even the dogs and camels, don't leave anything living. God works in mysterious ways. I can't help but rethink Genghis Khan in light of David's story. I was reading a history of China in one volume where Genghis Khan of Mongolia, was given a couple of paragraphs. Those paragraphs told me very little, but made me curious to know more about the Great Khan, someone I only knew as a name. The biography was an unforgettable story. I cherish the book as one of my lifetime favorites. I found him to be a truly great man in Mongolia's history. It was not a country then. The Mongols were different tribes that warred with each other, renewed revenge every generation. Genghis Khan brought them together into a nation of Mongols. They stopped fighting each other and became the Mongol hordes, the Tartars that terrorized cities along the Silk Road they created to carry the treasures of pillage back to Mongolia on yaks. Fleas on yaks carried the plague from China to Europe over the Silk Road. Genghis Khan is surely another one of God's favorites. European Christians glorified God with genocide in the Americas. It's kinda hard to reconcile all this with God is love.
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