#helping the homeless and seeing them as human beings entails not allowing them to live like this

[bighominiglo]

As someone who lived in SF for a minute years ago, and it's only gone downhill since then, it is the culture that makes the city so unsafe. California and SF in particular has the worst wealth disparity in the country. Ironic, considering what they virtue signal about in politics.

The homelessness problem is much worse than almost anywhere else in America, and the cops refuse to even police certain areas. Yes, they refuse to police. Meaning victims and children in that area are SOL. Yes, this is frequently a very racist and classist policy as the white affluent neighborhoods will have cops respond to their calls. i lived in the Tenderloin, one of the least policed areas smack dab in the middle of the city where homeless and addicted people line up on the streets outside and you have to step over heroin needles and literal shit (this was before fentanyl). i got harassed daily just for daring to be a woman outside.

Now instead of giving everyone a right to housing, building more shelters, high density affordable housing to combat the homelessness problem, SF just does nothing! In fact they incentivize homelessness and crime by refusing to police entire areas! And the citizens block every attempt at housing and shelter projects left and right. They're all NIMBYs who cry "muh low skyline" and don't want their property values "driven down by poor people".

Instead of programs to help addicts get clean they hand out free needles and give them tents to get high in! Outright helping people kill themselves through drugs. Helping homeless people kill themselves through drugs.

They decriminalized stealing so businesses have left the city in droves. Making it straight up a scene from a dystopian novel where the billionaires are sequestered away in giant but not tall buildings and complain to the cops when the homeless problem they refuse to solve lands itself on their property. The cops then take the homeless person back to the tenderloin and hand them a needle to help them kill themselves.

Of course people don't want to live there anymore. This is what their politics and self determination radical individualist capitalist culture has done for them, despite being one of the most progressive cities. No one hates the homeless more than San Francisco.

[frmartinshomiliesandreflections]

19th July >> Fr. Martin’s Gospel Reflections / Homilies on Matthew 12:1-8 for  Friday, Fifteenth Week in Ordinary Time: ‘Here, I tell you, is something greater than the Temple’.

Friday, Fifteenth Week in Ordinary Time

Gospel (Europe, Africa, New Zealand, Australia & Canada)

Matthew 12:1-8

The Son of Man is master of the sabbath

Jesus took a walk one sabbath day through the cornfields. His disciples were hungry and began to pick ears of corn and eat them. The Pharisees noticed it and said to him, ‘Look, your disciples are doing something that is forbidden on the sabbath.’ But he said to them, ‘Have you not read what David did when he and his followers were hungry – how he went into the house of God and how they ate the loaves of offering which neither he nor his followers were allowed to eat, but which were for the priests alone? Or again, have you not read in the Law that on the sabbath day the Temple priests break the sabbath without being blamed for it? Now here, I tell you, is something greater than the Temple. And if you had understood the meaning of the words: What I want is mercy, not sacrifice, you would not have condemned the blameless. For the Son of Man is master of the sabbath.’

Gospel (USA)

Matthew 12:1-8

The Son of Man is Lord of the sabbath.

Jesus was going through a field of grain on the sabbath. His disciples were hungry and began to pick the heads of grain and eat them. When the Pharisees saw this, they said to him, “See, your disciples are doing what is unlawful to do on the sabbath.” He said to the them, “Have you not read what David did when he and his companions were hungry, how he went into the house of God and ate the bread of offering, which neither he nor his companions but only the priests could lawfully eat? Or have you not read in the law that on the sabbath the priests serving in the temple violate the sabbath and are innocent? I say to you, something greater than the temple is here. If you knew what this meant, I desire mercy, not sacrifice, you would not have condemned these innocent men. For the Son of Man is Lord of the sabbath.”

Reflections (4)

(i) Friday, Fifteenth Week in Ordinary Time

In today’s gospel reading, the Pharisees criticize Jesus’ disciples for satisfying their hunger in a way they considered inappropriate on the Sabbath, by eating some of the grain as they walk through a cornfield. However, Jesus defends what his disciples are doing. He gives priority to human need over a strict interpretation of a religious law, even a law as important as the Sabbath law. This exchange between Jesus and the Pharisees shows us something of Jesus’ priorities. He was concerned for human well-being. He wanted the hungry to be fed, the thirsty to have clean water, the homeless to be housed, the sick to be cared for, the rejected to be welcomed. These were the values that he lived by and religious law was at the service of those values. Jesus lived by these values because he knew that they were God’s values. This is why he goes on to quote from the prophet Hosea, ‘What I want is mercy, not sacrifice’. God gives greater priority to people showing mercy to others than to people offering him sacrifice in the Temple. Showing mercy to others entails providing for people’s basic needs, such as ensuring that the hungry are fed. Jesus could speak as God’s representative. As he says in the gospel reading, ‘here, I tell you, is something greater than the Temple’. The Temple was traditionally understood to be the privileged place of God’s presence in the world. Jesus, however, is now the privileged place of God’s presence in the world. He speaks and acts as God would speak and act. Jesus shows that God’s highest value is mercy, the loving care of others in their need. Jesus wants us, his followers, to make God’s highest value our own in the way we relate to others.

And/Or

(ii) Friday, Fifteenth Week in Ordinary Time

The Temple Mount is the huge platform built by Herod the Great on which the magnificent temple that he had built rested. In its day that temple was considered to be one of the seven wonders of the world. In today’s gospel reading, Jesus says to the Pharisees, ‘here, I tell you, is something greater than the Temple’. When he spoke those words, he was, no doubt, pointing to himself. He was claiming to be greater than even the magnificent temple that Herod had built. That temple, in particular the Holy of Holies at the heart of the temple, was considered to be the place where God was present on earth. In the gospel reading Jesus is claiming that he is now the one where God is present on earth. God is no longer present in a building but in a person, the person of Jesus of Nazareth. Jesus is Emmanuel, God-with-us. Where Jesus is present, God is present. For us as Christians, where the risen Lord is present, God is present. We believe that the risen Lord is present with us in a special way in the Eucharist; in venerating the Eucharist, we are venerating Emmanuel, God with us. The risen Lord is also present in each one of us, in the members of his body, the church. Indeed, he is present in some sense in every human being who is suffering. In honouring and respecting each other, we honour the Lord.

And/Or

 (iii) Friday, Fifteenth Week in Ordinary Time

Herod’s temple was one of the great wonders of the world at the time. Yet, in this morning’s gospel reading, Jesus declares, ‘Now here, I tell you, is something greater than the temple’. Jesus declares himself to be greater than the magnificent temple in Jerusalem. The Temple was understood to be the house of God, where God was present in the world in a unique way. In the gospel reading this morning, Jesus declares himself to be the place where God is present; it is in and through his ministry that God’s reign is powerfully present. Herod’s temple was a place where sacrifices were offered to God. In this morning’s gospel reading, Jesus declares that what characterises his ministry is not sacrifice but mercy. He quotes the word of God from the prophet Hosea, ‘What I want is mercy, not sacrifice’. Jesus embodies the mercy of God. The sacrifices in the Temple were a human effort to reach God. However, in Jesus, God’s mercy reaches us. If God’s mercy touches us through Jesus, we are called to allow that mercy to reach others through us. Although Jesus is the supreme channel of God’s mercy, we are all called to be channels of God’s mercy. We are to be slow to judge, unlike the Pharisees in this morning’s gospel reading who judged Jesus’ disciples because they ate corn on the Sabbath to satisfy their hunger. Jesus’ response to the Pharisees shows that mercy requires that human need takes priority over human law.

And/Or

 (iv) Friday, Fifteenth Week in Ordinary Time

In today’s gospel reading Jesus says to his disciples, ‘Here I tell you is something greater than the Temple’. In those days it would have been difficult to conceive of anything greater than the Temple. Herod’s Temple in Jerusalem was considered to be one of the wonders of the world. It was revered as the focal point of God’s presence. Yet Jesus claims to be greater than the Temple because he is the new focal point of God’s presence. God was present no longer in a building but through a person, through Jesus, whose other name is Emmanuel, God with us. It is because he is Emmanuel that Jesus speaks of himself in our gospel reading as Lord of the Sabbath. He is not just Lord of the Sabbath, but Lord of all, Lord of the church, Lord of our lives. Because he is Lord of our lives, we are called to submit to his word so that his priorities become our priorities. In this morning’s gospel reading Jesus shows his priorities, declares that feeding the hungry takes priority over a certain narrow understanding of the Sabbath Law. His hungry disciples are entitled to pick ears of corn to satisfy their hunger, even on the Sabbath. Jesus’ word, and his whole life, helps us to sort out what is really important from what is not so important.

Fr. Martin Hogan, Saint John the Baptist Parish, Clontarf, Dublin, D03 AO62, Ireland.

Email: sjtbclontarf@eircom.net or  frmartinhogan@gmail.com

Parish Website: www.stjohnsclontarf.ie  Please join us via our webcam.

Twitter: @SJtBClontarfRC.

Facebook: St John the Baptist RC Parish, Clontarf.

Tumblr: Saint John the Baptist Parish, Clontarf, Dublin.

[the-voice-of-hell]

The Septagram

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***

Jason rolled the Prius down Beacon Avenue South, heading toward the old Veteran’s Administration building.  It was famously owned by Amazon for a minute, but was surely derelict once again.  It wasn’t his destination, specifically, when he set out.  But he didn’t find those police.

And cruising at a low speed, the drive was a chance to clear his mind.  He had the windows down and the fan on.  The air smelled smoky, but he thought it was probably from Eastern Washington burning again, and it didn’t alarm him much.

And the place began to grow in his mind.  He couldn’t see it past the wall of trees lining the roadside, but he thought about it, pictured it.  He knew the trees, like most of the trees in the Puget Sound area, were a thin facade to conceal a barren concrete land, promote the healthy verdant image that helped the state boom and sucker in tourists.  Beyond them there were homeless camps, ramshackle derelict homes two minutes from being cleared for condos.  And at the end of that strip of hillside, that mighty old art deco hospital building.

Maybe he could just stroll right in.  The power was on.  Maybe he could use the elevator, get out on the floors Bezos used to walk, get a view of the whole city.

“Movin’ on up, Jase old boy.  Movin’ on up.”

Then he was there.  He pulled into the driveway in front of the building and just parked there, because why not?  The sky was still blue.  He smiled at the building.  Why was it so pleasing to him at the moment?  He didn’t know.  Looking up at the big double door though, he saw chains looped through the handles.  But just ten feet from that laying in the grass, there was a shovel.

“It’s goddamn kismet.”

He broke and he entered, yet again.

There was a short stairwell up to a fancy landing.  The interior had been remodeled extensively to accommodate modern corporate sensibilities.  There were organically shaped floating walls paneled in stainless steel like giant lizard scales, concealing modern bathrooms.  Only minimal lights were on in side halls.  The atrium was dim but for the blue daylight spilling in from the giant windows on a higher level.  Long thin wires supported boring ultramodern light fixtures that remained unlit.  He wasn’t about to fish for the light switch in the convoluted walls that encircled the area.

He found an elevator and gave it a go.  It reached a high floor and he stepped out but he wasn’t convinced he was at the pinnacle yet.  He hunted the dully lit corridors for a stairwell.  It didn’t take long.  The central, highest part of the building didn’t have a very large floor plan.

There it was.  A floor paneled in shimmering darkness, the hall leading to one room.  A lucite booth stood outside it like an incongruous phone booth, or Roald Dahl’s Great Glass Elevator.  What was that for?  And beyond it, the room.

He tried the knob and got irate that it was locked.  Why?  The billionaire had left the building, and surely taken everything that could be anything to anybody with him.

Jason kicked the door a few times uselessly.  Then leaning against the wall, he noticed the phone booth was ajar.  He looked inside and saw a selection of buttons.  He tried pressing them, and soon a clicking sound came from the big man’s door.

He hopped out of the booth in a hurry, hoping it wouldn’t time out on him, and his foot snagged on something.  Glancing back for just a moment, he saw a box of “.45 ACP” bullets sitting on the floor.

He ignored it and went inside.  Behold, glory.  The most important office in the world.  Tall brass-plated walls, stained glass above, giant windows below.  Jason walked slowly toward them, only a single black desk and tall chair stood between him and the view.

The chair started to spin slowly in place.  He jumped a little.

A man sat there, nailed in place with great spikes, stripped to the waist, bleeding in streams, mouth open in a silent wheezing scream, eyes fish-like behind great globs of tears.  A little monster like Jabba the Hutt’s pet sat in the man’s lap, zapping his face with a taser until it noticed Jason, and whipped around to offer a happy face.

“Oh god!  What the hell is going on her…  Is that him?  Is that Mr. Bezos?”

The little thing nodded proudly.  “Hell is for sinners, bro!”

***

The anarchists couldn’t bring themselves to move.  They sat in a circle around Waxy Maxy.  He was dead - impaled with an oversized drumstick.  Every time someone suggested they get up and move, they just sat back down and cried some more.  They had accepted the mark for fear of death.  What was left for them?  How could they escape from Hell now?

Two women on bicycles rolled to a stop by them.  The blonde with glasses looked to be in better spirits and spoke on their behalf.  “Hey boys.  It’s time to blow this popsicle farm.  Come with us and I’ll keep you safe.”

Radical Huang said, “Huh?”

“I’m special, guys.  I can do it. Tell ‘em, Rosie.”

“I saw her kill one of them.  She’s a freak, dudes.”

They didn’t know what to say, looking at each other, looking at their arms bleeding lightly from the occult symbols pressed into them.

“It’ll be great.  Us on our bikes, you on your boards.  Let’s get everyone who stayed behind, give ‘em another shot at evacuation.  Whaddya say?”

Colin Guts was the first to snap out of the trance of sorrow.  “Shit.  Shit, you’re right.  C’mon dudes!  Let’s get the fuck out of here before those things come around.”

“They said we’d be safe,” Duke said.

“After they killed Maxy!  Don’t be a bootlicker.  We gotta go!”

They started to stand up, to grab their skateboards.  Rosemarie looked down at the impaled guy, shuddering.  Jennifer slapped her on the arm.

“Hey, pal.  You don’t wanna end up like that, right?  Let’s burn rubber!”

“Yeah.”

In her heart, Rosemarie felt they had been telling the truth.  If she stayed, she could have lived safely as a subject of their queen.  But what would that entail?  She raised the kickstand and started rolling.

She glanced up to the sky and saw something odd.  The wind was blowing, whipping tiny bits of detritus near the tops of the low rise buildings.  And through the sky directly above a flock of pigeons flew - single file.  They were beak to tail, dozens of birds long, flightpath wiggling like a giant snake.

A fleck of white splattered across her cheek.  “Ugh, shit!”

***

A sexy fair man stood in the road, sunglasses concealing his eyes.  One could guess he was east asian, or more likely, not human.  He wore a long red coat with gold and silver appointments over pure black clothing, his black hair was long on top, waving gently in the gathering breeze.  Dusk was drawing in.  The suburban street was one eternal strip mall by the name of Covington.  Everything from the dentists to the Fred Meyers to the accountants to the combination Pizza Hut and Kentucky Fried Chicken seemed to lean in his direction, praying to their new master.

He sipped a Dairy Queen Oreo Blizzard through a straw, waved the fingers of his free hand in the air, conducting powerful magic.  The demons around him were enchanted with invisibility, but it only worked fully when they sat still, and the hyperactive things danced to the sounds of Poison on a bluetooth speaker that sat in the gutter.  The song was “Nothin’ but a Good Time.”  The things shimmered like heat waves all around him.

A caravan approached - what was left of it after a few of the heavy vehicles ran out of gas along the way.  The occupants of those crowded into the remainder, reducing their already pitiful gas mileage.  The roofs, sideboards, and hoods were crowded with goat angels and starlings.  The lead angel sat on the hood of the lead vehicle - a yellow civilian hummer splattered with blood and gore.  He used his hands to prop up his broken wings, thus gesturing for the caravan to stop.  Then he hopped down and strolled toward the scene.

“Master Bybaal.  I offer servants to your great cause.”

“Have they been pressed with the Queen’s mark?”

“No.  Rather your own.”

“You have done well.  Marshal them for me.”

He turned around, snake tail arching over his shoulder with intense glowing light in its eyes, his halo fire burned brighter, and his voice boomed.  “PRESENT YOURSELVES TO HIM.”

He picked up his standard from where he’d lodged it in the car’s grill and strolled to make room for the goblins.  They all piled out of the caravan like it was clown cars and bumbled to stand before their new god.

Bybaal tilted his head, letting the shades slide to the end of his nose, and regarded the motley horde.

“Unworthy creatures.  Even the death shield would only serve to have them cut down faster.  Resach, what would you do with them?”

“Mm, my wisdom is as far below thee as my station.”

“The evidence stands before me.”

Big Donny nearly hyperventilated, afraid he wouldn’t make the cut.  Like being picked last for dodgeball.  He was shrieking inside.  Let us matter!  We are alive!  He was drenched in sweat, fast running out of the fluid necessary to continue living.

Resach spoke.  “Still, you must be able to empower them in some way.”

“Perhaps.  For now stow them in the apartment building down in Tukwila.  The one by my dove farm, marked with fire?”

“I can find it.  Thank you for allowing me to serve you, my liege.”

“You are welcome.  Bear these goblins from my sight.”

“I shall.”

Bybaal returned to his magic chores.  He was one of the wheels of Bymaan, broken angels of the highest orders.  For now he wove spells at her command.  Perhaps soon this wheel would turn another way.

***

A group of survivors huddled in the garage of their apartment building, contemplating escape, unsure of what to do.  They all claimed to each other that they hadn’t accepted the mark, but no one was showing their arms.  A young man was promising to lead them to safety, but it was hard to make themselves move.

At last they all piled into cars and formed up in a line all the way to the gate.  It had been left open.  The young man led them out into the street.  The idea was to take I-5 all the way to Canada, or possibly divert to State Route 9 to avoid the cities along the way.

They all got out of the parking garage and headed the right way.  It was a promising start.  But then the road split and a wall of pinkish light beamed into the sky like a curtain, so bright you could see it in the waning daylight.  There were multiple low speed collisions and people screaming.

The street ahead began to lift.  The whole area of Denny was rising like a step pyramid - the surface chunks staying horizontally level as they rose, the center reaching higher and higher.

Something swam out of the crack in the ground - a white worm-like thing at least dozens of feet long.  It smashed its face through the lead car’s windshield and pulled out the young man, lofting him into the air inside its warped jaws.  It started to hork him down.

Suddenly it jerked and spat the man back out.  He banged sloppy on his car’s roof.  The monster was twisting in pain.  A human-sized shape whipped around it, stabbing and moving, leaping out of the way whenever it tried to recover.

The people started to leap out of their cars and hustle away from the destruction.  A handsome lithe black man with a bald head and close-fitting dark black clothes tried to get their attention.  “Don’t run that way!  Get away from tall buildings!”  He gestured to a parking lot not far away and they complied.

Then the man looked to the battle and came as close as he dared.  “CLARK!  What are you doing?!”

The blur slowed down long enough to do a little plie and bow.  It was an old man in dance shoes, the toes of which were yellow-white with the worm-thing’s ichor.  “I’m saving the day.  It’s fabulous!”

The worm took advantage, tried to swallow him up, but Clark was too quick.  He did a triangle kick off the young man’s car and landed with a sharp toe in the thing’s eye-like area.  It flew back, bounced off the concrete, and slipped back into the abyss from whence it came.

The young man weakly propped himself up, looking at the distinguished gentlemen.  “What happened?”

“I happened, my boy.”

Thurston shook his head.  “Look at this destruction!  It might yet cause some buildings to collapse.  We need to get to safety.”  He helped the young guy down from his car.

The guy said, “We need to get everybody safe.  There’s more people in town here, I know it.  I don’t want anybody to hafta stay here.”

Clark cocked an eyebrow.  “Well let’s see what we can do about that.”

***

Jamie Infante couldn’t take religion as seriously as his parents did.  It was too full of bad ideas, cruel beliefs.  But now he saw that the world was indeed a cruel game set in motion by an insane God.

He wondered, there in the darkness, the horrible shocks of the hummer jolting him with every bit of grit that passed beneath the thing, he wondered if Jesus was the way.  Jesus didn’t bother with condemning gay people, seemed kind and cruel in relatable ways.  If Jesus was apiece with the God that created this situation, he must’ve been the sane part.

“Jesus, set me free.  In God’s name I will set this world right.”

Killing that fallen angel in Hilltop had probably given him delusions of grandeur.  What reason did he have to be so proud, in the trunk of some goblin’s overcompensation machine?

They came to a stop and he braced himself.  Any move was an opportunity to break free.  It was like the trunk shot from early in Pulp Fiction, the camera looking out at Sam Jackson and John Travolta.  But instead it was Infante looking up at two goat-angel soldiers.  One looked like a man but for the top of his head being far too small, horns growing where most of his brain should have been.  The other had a face like a baby goat - just too small for the human-like body it was attached too - and puffy black and red emo hair spilling out of its basket-like wire helmet.

They were stronger than the goblins, and maybe they understood they’d need strength to deal with this man.  Or it could be that the goblins would have killed him outright, but the angels had some other purpose in mind for him.

He looked around, tested himself with a few spasms of the body.  No, his legs were bound as well as his hands.  No running away yet.  He looked around, tried to get as much intel as he could.  There were fewer cars.  Same number of goblins and demons though.  The lead goblin begged for some word of favor from the lead angel and it set him in motion with a flick of the wrist.

Then it turned its attention to him.  The goats hauled him closer.  The fallen angel said, “You might get to know me better while we are together.  I am Resach, a squire in the legions of Bybaal.  A sergeant, if you will.”

“Because we’re both sergeants?  I’m supposed to like you now?”

“It was worth a try.  Jamie Infante?  You may not bend your knee to our Queen, but you are a prize nonetheless.  If you will just see that your power belongs among ours.”

“Go back to hell, cabrón!”

“Hell, Heaven, Earth.  They’re all the same.”

“Then go!  Leave us alone.”

The guards bleated laughter.

“That’s how God works.  We wouldn’t be so cruel.  Come along, Jamie.”

The creature walked up the steps to the shoddy old brick apartment building and his goatmen hauled Infante along behind him.

***

Park was inside his own skull again, in a pool of water-thinned blood.  Or was it blood-thickened water?  He looked up at the vault of his cranial dome.  The fontanelle was closed again.  But where was that light coming from?

He felt a shooting pain on the back of his head, clutched it, and looked up to the back of his skull.  It was cracked open - must have been from hitting it on the highway.  Light poured in, washed over him.  He felt the soft thumps of the Greeks walking atop his skull.  He pawed around in the pool, tried to find purchase.

Closer now to the crack.  He reached into it, tried to look out.  But he couldn’t fit his head far enough through it.  He pulled, trying to get it to part just a little more.  Then the pain in the back of his head became too much to bear and he fell back into the bloody water.

Light, still.  More light was spilling in from behind.  He spun about in the water and looked up to his eye sockets.  The light from the back of his skull was hitting his eye sockets.  It burned.

He saw Infante, not shirtless yet like in the future vision.  He was still in his bulletproof vest, bound at hands and feet.  A naked man sat beside him, big broken wings swept back.  A serpent grew out from above the man’s buttocks and curled around, going closer to the cop as he struggled.

It bit his thigh and started pumping venom into his body.  He screamed.

The naked man was that angel from the bridge.  Goat bleats and laughs surrounded him.  Bricks surrounded them.  A building like a flaming tombstone in a concrete cemetery - a neighborhood of Tukwila that should have been nothing but business, bearing one sad reminder of a residential past.  Park spun in place.  The sun was in the east.

He woke to see Iphigenia leaning against a rocky grass hill, his backpack under her head as a pillow.  He felt cardboard beneath his hands, his arms.  That had been his bed.  The world was a vivid dark blue, but was that after dusk or before dawn?

“Iphigenia!”

She stirred and wrinkled her nose at him.  “I never told you that.”

“It’s the light.  I hate it… But it showed me I was wrong.  You’re not going to find Infante.  I am.”

“What light?  I can’t see anything here, and more importantly, that fuckin’ minotaur can’t either.  It’s still alive, you know.”

“Doesn’t matter.  What time is it?”

She took out her cell phone.  She’d put it on super power saver mode a few days ago and it was still working.  “Nine fifty.”

“Whuh?  Oh.  Good.  At dawn the serpent will bite him.  We have time.”

“The light.  I heard someone else say they had it.  She didn’t seem to think the future could be changed… Well, aside from one thing.”

“I need to go.  Need to...”

“Fine, I’ll help you.  But there’s plenty of time before dawn, so we should get a bite to eat and new bikes.”  She helped pull him to his feet.

Where there arms gripped each other’s, he felt something strange.  Maybe the light was still with him.  She felt powerful, like she was skinny but covered in reedy steel-hard muscles.  For that her weight wasn’t much of a balance, and she had to go back on her heels to get him off the ground.  But he knew that she was powerful in a way he was not.  Where she touched him, he was soft and yielding under her touch.  Where he touched her, she was as firm as a metal pole.  He wasn’t a weak man, but he knew her strength was profound.  It meant something.

But she let him go.  He nearly swooned, and forgot about the moment.  It was going to be an effort just to keep walking.  Maybe the food would help but he felt nauseous.

He had to keep going.

They walked around the edge of the building.  Park forced himself to not lean against it.  Move like you’re well, maybe you can fake it ‘til you make it.  Iphigenia moved past him with shorter but faster strides.  He hustled as fast as he could go without blacking out or vomiting.  It was a struggle.

Bright lights.  They were in an abandoned grocery store.  A lot had been looted, but far from everything.  More people wanted to evacuate than hole up.  Park slumped into a chair at the deli area.

“You jus’... get whatever.  I’ll see you when you get back.”

She was already out of sight, but then quickly returned with some food, drinks, and medicine.  Or had she been slow and he just passed out for it?

“Cheese?  I’m lactose intolerant.”

“Me too.  That’s why this bottle.”  A lactase pill.

“Those don’t work for me either.”

“You need protein and fat.  I wouldn’t trust much of the meat here.  Might still be some jerky hiding somewhere, but all the spots I saw got robbed.”

“Protein bars?”

“All gone.”

“Shit.”

He tried to get some energy back with what he could, and took whatever pills she put in front of him.  Best not to think about it too hard.

Park considered his reluctant comrade.  “You were saying something before about the light, the future.  What was that?”

“Old lady in Elijah’s house.  She said she saw the future.”

“What did she see?”

“I’m gonna kill all the murderers.”

“Just you?”

“I dunno.  You want in?”

“I guess I do.  They got my...”

“Infant.  I heard you.  But you don’t look like you’re ready to fight.”

“I’ll do whatever it takes.”

“Saving Private Ryan.”

“Sergeant Infante.”

She rolled her eyes.  “Well, maybe when he gets free he’ll be better at fighting than you are.”

“Hey, I killed a freakin’ minotaur.”

“You shot it.  I told you it was still alive.  Pay attention.”

He grumbled and ate quietly.  All too soon, it was time to shamble on.

***

Jason apologized to Mr. Bezos and backed away.  The monster was a little thing, but what could he do?  It might be that demon magic was the only thing keeping him alive, forcing him to feel that pain.  He’d probably bleed out if Jason freed him.

A great rumbling shook the building and he heard glass starting to splinter.  He bolted for the stairs, moving as fast as he dared.  Part of him remembered in an earthquake one is supposed to stand in a doorway or get under a desk.  He couldn’t make himself do either of those things.  Well, maybe if the building collapsed, it would happen to do it while he was passing through a doorway.  You never know.

At the bottom floor he looked back to the atrium with the high windows.  They were filled with pink light.  Turning back to the door and hustling out that way, he saw the light again.  It was everywhere.

The ground was coming apart, raising in tiers, like Beacon Hill was trying to remake itself into a Q*bert level.  The festive glow of hell slipped through the cracks in the ground, creating curtains of light.

Jason made like Q*bert and started leaping between the blocks of earth.  At the outer limits, just past the parking lot, he broke into a sprint.  At last, several blocks away, lungs bursting with the exertion, he let himself look back, tripped, and collapsed.

The shaking had stopped, and the fancy old building was now taller.  Had it changed?  It seemed more like a fantastic brass castle - like that Disney logo redesigned for the demonic set.  One change was more clear - the ground below it had raised like a pedestal of black stone, hundreds of feet above the rest of the hill.

He let himself just lay there in the street, trying to recover from the damage the little action scene had dealt him.  If something came for him then, would he even fight it?

At last, he dragged himself to his feet, only slightly out of breath.  His throat felt bloody raw from the exertion.  But he had recovered enough to move - and just in time.  He saw headlights coming down the road.

He wanted to believe it was the missing cops, but hid in the tree line just the same.  As the cars passed by, he saw that it was three convertibles - wait, no, three cars with the roofs ripped off.  They were being driven by a bunch of freaks that looked part goat, part man.  Maybe the vandalism was just to accommodate the polearms they held up in the air.  They bleated and laughed.  Apparently, life was good for goat boys.

Jason started hiking back toward his mother’s house.  It was going to be a long trip.

***

It was a night of great movements.  Seven points throughout Seattle thrust into the sky as great citadels, forming a very irregular constellation of pink light.  Where there had already been great structures - as on Beacon Hill - they became crowns for greater structures.  Where there had been none - as in the Denny Regrade - there was instead a castle of earth and asphalt, brutal and foreboding.

And as the earth moved, those who had remained in the region during the evacuation were forced from their complacence.  Many had sworn an oath they could barely comprehend to this new Kingdom, but now they felt the full measure of its power - and wanted out.

They gathered in caravans and on foot - even on bicycles - by whatever means they had to hand.  They rolled along barren concrete strips, north or south - whichever way had them moving away from Seattle.  All the while they couldn’t forget the other movement that was sure to come.

For while some sparse demonic forces had stayed behind to recruit mortal subjects, that first wave that had set out with the orchestra was much larger - and they would surely be returning at some point.

Monsters moved as well.  The miasma of the changing world had them shimmying, lurking, screaming, wallowing in the night.  Some were born of the creatures unnatural to the land - imported flora and fauna from cattle to birds to blackberry bushes.  Some crawled directly out of hell where the land broke.

The Queen’s realm was taking shape.  She had to admit, it made her a little horny.  Humans were her sexual ideal, succumbing to their allure part of the reason she was cast out of Heaven.  In the warm haze of her reawakening desire, she thought of them - and it altered her shape.

She was a broken angel like the rest - her body a savage blend of the features of human, lioness, and cow - eternally dripping with the blood of her wounds.  Her four great eagle wings had long ago been torn to stumps bearing feather scraps.  Her four heads all sprang impossibly from the same neck, overlapping in space, making her quite eerie to behold - a woman, a cow, an eagle, a lioness.  Where once a proper halo had made her impossible for mortals to look upon with its brilliance, now pinkish flames licked through her hair and feathers, snaking as tendrils around her massive silver crown.

But that lust for human flesh pulsed from her fiery heart, crept down her limbs, subsumed feather and fur under voluptuous white skin.  She stretched on the stone floor of her throne room, recently upthrust high above the north end of Capitol Hill.  Pigeons flapped about, psychically driven by her aura to a mad orgy of their own, cooing and chasing each other about the floor.

Bymaan was splayed out on the ground like a cat.  No way to dignify her fresh human visage.  But she luxuriated in the sensation of the coarse stones on her bare skin, rolled in place and giggled.  Red hair fell over her face.  The giggles turned into peals of maniacal laughter, then subsided again into moans.  She rubbed herself up and down before finally reaching her labia with plump elegant fingers.  She gripped the thick red hair there and slipped one finger between the lips, cooing to herself.

“Damn, it’s good to have a human pussy again.  You ever try that, Abalaam?”

“I have felt them from the inside, Your Majesty.  Quite pleasant.”

“How about it, then?  I don’t have the time to properly seduce a mortal man at the moment.”

The pigeons had mostly sorted themselves into pairings, some male and female, many homosexual as well.  They shuffled about the floor like amorous feather dusters, trilling and cooing.

Abalaam stepped among them, still in his broken angelic form, a towering beast.  The little birds bounced off his hooves, oblivious.  The great eye-covered wheel in his back spun in agitation at this arousal, unable to complete a circle for its broken shape, whacking up and down in place.  Eyes bled in anger.

He hated his Queen as much as his brother Bybaal did, but her power was impressive.  Her lust compelled him, reminded him of his own ancient lust for the human form.  But he saw an opportunity to annoy her and took it.

“Mm, you are most comely to behold, my Queen.  Yet you may have difficulty drawing out the love of a man.”

“No!  Why would you say this?  Even in their fear of me, they may find something arousing.”

“You have changed your form to one arousing indeed.”  He underscored the point with a slight shift of his hips.  “But you did not have a human at hand to judge scale.  By my reckoning, you are twice the height and eightfold the weight they expect of their women.”

“No!” Her word send a blast of sound through the room, causing all the pigeons to roll and bounce away in confusion.  She folded up her huge legs, draped her arms over her knees, and pouted.  “Most vexatious.”

***

Infante lay on his side, felt like he was dying.  The angel had stripped naked for some reason, lay down beside him.  It had the form of a sexy man, muscular but not dehydrated like those lubricated beef jerky sticks on fitness magazines.  Did the thing know he was gay?  Was it taunting him?  It didn’t arouse him in the slightest, given the circumstances - the smell of blood, stifling dust, sweat.  The mortal terror, the monstrous details attached to the beautiful being.

But it smiled at him and made him wonder how far inside his mind it could reach.  It said, “This is an exciting time, Jamie.  Nobody knows what’s going to happen.”

“Somebody knows.”

“The oracles and sibyls, but who can hear them?  At any rate, I don’t know what’s going to happen.  You don’t know what’s going to happen.  Isn’t that interesting?”

“No.”

“This edifice is infused with dark energies.  Occultists convened here over a century ago.  I can smell it. I can see it, in the violet flames that dance across its crown.”

“Uh-huh.”

“Magic is possibility.  Things can happen within these walls that nobody can anticipate…  Well, I guess the poetry of it is lost on you.”

“Oh yeah, you can shove your poetry up your dickhole.”

“You should open your mind.  You could be so much more important to us than our other subjects.  These empty-headed murderers, or those cowards with her mark, hiding in these stone warrens like so many rabbits.”

“Why?”  He didn’t want to break, but a tear rolled down his face.

The devil smiled.  “Open your mind.  You’ll find out.”

***

  NEXT

  -

[williamsjoan]

Existential education error: Failing to train students on software

Ryan Craig Contributor

Ryan Craig is managing director of University Ventures.

More posts by this contributor

Facebook is going back to college

Broadening education investments to full-stack solutions

Although many of the milestones of the digital revolution have sprung directly from the research output of America’s colleges and universities, like Athena from Zeus’s forehead, on the instructional side, American higher education has taken a laid-back approach. Sure, there are more courses in computer science, millions of students taking courses online and MIT just committed $1 billion to build a new college for AI. But a campus-visiting time-traveler from 25 or 50 years ago would find a very familiar setting — with the possible exception of students more comfortable staring at their devices than maintaining eye contact.

This college stasis may be even more surprising to visitors from the transformed workplace. Jobs that made no or marginal use of digital devices 10 years ago now tether workers to their machines as closely as today’s students are glued to their smartphones. Processes that involved paper are now entirely digital. And experience with relevant function- and industry-specific business software is required in job descriptions for many entry-level jobs.

This hit home a few weeks ago when speaking to an audience of 250 college and university officials. I asked which of their schools provide any meaningful coursework in Salesforce, the No. 1 SaaS platform in American business.

Not one hand went up.

There are many reasons for this. Few if any faculty have dedicated their careers to (or even get marginally excited about) equipping students with the skills they need to secure and succeed in their first jobs. No one’s losing their job (yet) over failure to help students get jobs. Another is the cost of teaching; with strong employer demand for these skills, finding and hiring capable faculty costs more than teaching non-technical subjects. Finally, there’s the rapid pace of change in technology, and the sense that any educational effort will be obsolete in a few years. (Of course, the reality of business software is quite different; foundational platforms like Salesforce have a long shelf life — 10-plus years and counting — and some platforms are expected to last for a generation.)

But the primary reason colleges aren’t educating students on the software they need to launch their careers is the notion that it’s unnecessary because millennials (and now Gen Zers) are “digital natives.”

The idea of digital natives isn’t new. It’s been around for decades: Kids have grown up with digital technologies and so are adept at all things digital. It’s certainly true that today’s college students are proficient with Netflix and Spotify and smartphones. But it’s equally true that the smartphones they’ve grown up with haven’t remotely prepared them to use office phones, let alone career-critical business software.

Business software is really hard, even for digital natives.

Eleanor Cooper, co-founder of Pathstream, a startup partnering with higher education institutions to provide business software training, notes that millennials and Gen Zers are “accustomed to Instagram-like platforms which are both intuitive and instantly gratifying. But without exception, we find the user experience of learning business software to be exactly the opposite: instant friction and delayed gratification. Students first face an often multi-hour series of technical steps just to get the software set up before they begin working through tedious button-clicking instructions, which are at best mind-numbing and at worst outdated and inaccurate for the current version of the software.”

In an article in The New Yorker last month, “Why Doctors Hate Their Computers,” Dr. Atul Gawande describes the challenge of implementing Epic, a SaaS platform for managing patient care: “recording and communicating our medical observations, sending prescriptions to a patient’s pharmacy, ordering tests and scans, viewing results, scheduling surgery, sending insurance bills.”

First, there’s 16 hours of mandatory training. Gawande “did fine with the initial exercises, like looking up patients’ names and emergency contacts. When it came to viewing test results, though, things got complicated. There was a column of thirteen tabs on the left side of my screen, crowded with nearly identical terms: ‘chart review,’ ‘results review,’ ‘review flowsheet.’ We hadn’t even started learning how to enter information, and the fields revealed by each tab came with their own tools and nuances.”

Business software is really hard, even for digital natives. Today’s students are accustomed to simple interfaces. But simple interfaces are possible only when the function is simple, like messaging or selecting video entertainment. Today’s leading business software platforms don’t just manage a single function. They manage hundreds, if not thousands.

Gawande references a book by IBM engineer Frederick Brooks, The Mythical Man-Month, which sets forth a Darwinian theory of software evolution from a cool, easy-to-use program (“built by a few nerds for a few of their nerd friends” to perform a limited function), to a bigger program “product” that delivers more functionality to more people, to a “very uncool program system.” Gawande points to the example of Fluidity, a program written by a grad student to run simulations of small-scale fluid dynamics. Researchers loved it, and soon added code to perform new features. The software became more complex, harder to use and more restrictive.

And so beyond cumbersome interfaces, the second reason why business software is really hard is that it has become inextricably and tightly wound up with business processes. Salesforce consultants will tell you it’s easier to conform your business practices to Salesforce than to try to customize (or even configure) Salesforce to support the way you do business today. And that’s true for almost all business software. As Gawande notes, “as a program adapts and serves more people and more functions, it naturally requires tighter regulation. Software systems govern how we interact as groups, and that makes them unavoidably bureaucratic in nature.”

The myth of the digital native is convenient for colleges and universities, because it allows them to stay focused on what faculty want to teach rather than what students actually need to learn.

Software-defined business practices are increasingly standardized across functions and industries, and highly knowable. And because they’re knowable, hiring managers want to see candidates who know them. So it’s not just about educating students on software; inherent in preparing students on business software is equipping them with industry and/or job-function expertise. And that requires much more than 16 hours of training.

“Why can’t our work systems be like our smartphones — flexible, easy, customizable? The answer is that the two systems have different purposes,” Gawande explained. “Consumer technology is all about letting me be me. Technology for complex enterprises is about helping groups do what the members cannot easily do by themselves — work in coordination.”

The myth of the digital native is convenient for colleges and universities, because it allows them to stay focused on what faculty want to teach rather than what students actually need to learn. But it’s self-centered, superficial and silly. Rather than thinking about technology in terms of Netflix and smartphones, walk down the street and take a look at the software being utilized to manage your college’s admissions, financial aid and human resources functions. Indeed, 95 percent of your graduates will begin their careers working in places that look a lot more like this than like the faculty lounge. And that’s if they’re lucky. Otherwise they’ll begin their careers working in places that look a lot more like Starbucks.

In his article, Gawande notes that despite the many challenges of adapting to working (and living) on a business software platform, software is eating the world for a good reason: to improve outcomes for consumers. The Epic implementation should allow hospitals to scan records to identify patients who’ve been on opioids for more than three months in order to provide outreach and reduce risk of overdose, or to improve care for homeless patients by seeing that they’ve already had three negative TB tests and therefore don’t need to be isolated. “We think of this as a system for us and it’s not,” said the hospital system’s chief clinical officer. “It is for the patients.”

These improved outcomes are synonymous with the data analytics revolution — a revolution that has colleges and universities excited about new programs and increased enrollment. But all the additional data to improve these outcomes needs to be captured first. And that’s done with complex business software. So it’s unfair, or at least hypocritical, of colleges and universities to attempt to pick the fruit of big data without first sowing the seeds. And sowing the seeds entails a serious investment in preparing students with the technical and business process knowledge they’ll need to use the software that makes big data possible.

Existential education error: Failing to train students on software published first on https://timloewe.tumblr.com/

[oselatra]

Not violent

I truly appreciate your paper's coverage of the mental health [coverage] cuts and the recent rally to protest them ("Mental health cuts stir controversy," Oct. 4).

Not violent

I truly appreciate your paper's coverage of the mental health [coverage] cuts and the recent rally to protest them ("Mental health cuts stir controversy," Oct. 4). However, I was deeply disturbed by information in the article that is incorrect and damaging to people living with serious mental illness (diagnoses like schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, schizoaffective disorder, etc.) and the movement to ensure their care. A local CEO/organizer was quoted stating that perhaps 80 percent of her clients with mental illness could become violent if off their medications. It's very disheartening that such misinformation persists even in people who serve this vulnerable population.

According to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, people disabled by SMI are, in fact, 10 times more likely to be the VICTIMS of violent crime than the general population. Only 3 to 5 percent of violent crimes are committed by people with SMI diagnoses. Multiple peer-reviewed academic journal articles have replicated these statistics.

I have worked clinically with people experiencing SMI since 2004, and the vast majority of them have violent trauma backgrounds (histories of being abused/neglected in childhood, raped/sexually assaulted, experienced domestic violence, muggings/beatings, etc.) They are not scary or dangerous people, but they often have survived scary and dangerous assaults. We should not ensure the funding to provide their care because we fear being victimized by them, but because it is the just and human thing to do. If we are looking for fiscal reasons to do so, paying for emergency room visits and homeless shelters is far more costly than providing regular outpatient mental health care. And while it's true that prisons are the largest providers of "inpatient" mental health care in our country, that is due to systemic deficiencies in the mental health system, not because people living with mental illness are violent. The vast majority of people with SMI in prison are not there for a violent offense. It's also important to note that with appropriate treatment, people with SMI diagnoses can lead productive and fulfilling lives, with the same family, employment and citizen participation as everyone else.

Katie Logan

Little Rock

Really?

In his comments on the confirmation of Brett Kavanaugh, U.S. Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) said attempts at "mob rule" by left-wing protesters to disrupt the Kavanaugh hearings cannot become the "new normal." Really, senator? Consider the new normal your party has brought to the White House and America in the form of Donald J. Trump. Consider the rise of very ugly elements in this country embodied by various white supremacy groups, groups emboldened by this administration.Please tell us all about the "new normal," senator.

RL Hutson Cabot

An open letter to Boozman, Cotton

This is the last communication that I will ever issue to your office. In the past, I have sent the occasional online message or even telephoned to discuss certain concerns with your very helpful and respectful staff. I have had the belief, perhaps wrong, that your staff actually entertained my concerns and understood them to be valid, even if you yourself later voted contrary to my wishes. However, I cannot maintain any longer the fiction that you actually respect your constituency, and thus I see no purpose in contacting your office and sharing my concerns in the future.

The catalyst for this decision is your vote to confirm Brett Kavanaugh as a U.S. Supreme Court justice. Let us dispense with the compelling allegations against him regarding both reported sexual assaults and his documented history of drinking alcohol to excess. Let us focus, instead, upon his opening statement at the Sept. 27, 2018, hearing, during which he made unfounded accusations against people on the left end of the political spectrum and asserted, without proof, that the Clinton family had orchestrated a campaign of revenge against him. In that moment, he signaled to the whole United States that, as a judge, he would be serving not the interests of all Americans but, instead, the interests of the Republican Party only. By voting for him, you, too, signaled your approval of the idea that the mechanisms of justice are likewise to be reserved only for members of the Republican Party.

As a political independent, this means to me that you have no interests at all in representing me or other Arkansans who are not members of your political party. I have, for perhaps longer than was realistically feasible, believed that people of different viewpoints could come together and actually implement policies that would make the lives of ordinary Americans better. I was raised by military parents with values that could generally be described as conservative and cast my first presidential vote for Sen. Bob Dole in 1996. Even though I had significant disagreements with President George W. Bush's policies, I could admire his creation, like President Bill Clinton before him, of a Cabinet that "looked like America," as well as the respect with which he treated his political opponents, as when he turned to Nancy Pelosi during a State of the Union address and expressed pride in being the first president to say the words "Madame Speaker." In my own line of work, I labor greatly to get input from people with a variety of backgrounds and viewpoints, to represent a world beyond my own ideas, to not only change minds but allow my own mind to be changed when new information arises. In short, I believe that there are a variety of ways in which we can make this world a better place and that attaining anything like the abstract concept of justice entails being willing to listen to one another and being open to a wealth of evidence.

You, however, do not, as you have made clear with your vote for Kavanaugh. By putting on the bench someone who operates as such a rank partisan, with no interest in justice beyond how it serves his own narrow, privileged clique, you have demonstrated a willingness to pollute, with your own partisan anger, an institution that once had as its central concern the benefit of all Americans. Too, by holding up the nomination of Merrick Garland for more than a year, and by threatening to hold up any nomination for the next four years had Hillary Clinton won the presidential election, you made public your private conviction that democracy only "works" when it is working for Republicans. You have demonstrated that because I am not a Republican, someone like me should not expect justice at the Supreme Court — and thus, I should not expect representation by you in your official capacity as a senator, even if my concern touches upon matters personal rather than political questions.

As I mentioned, I was born to military parents. They met at the Defense Language Institute in Monterey, Calif., where my father (U.S. Marine Corps) was studying Thai, while my mother (U.S. Army) was studying Czech. Both of them had the aim of serving in military intelligence, and although my mother had to leave the Army after marriage, my father continued his service. I was born in the 1970s at the Naval Air Station on the island of Guam during a period of great tumult for Southeast Asia. My parents told me that the language instructors at DLI were often refugees now working with the U.S. government with the hope of aiding in the defeat of those regimes then ruling their respective home countries. In the eyes of communist-run Czechoslovakia, my mother's teacher would have been considered a traitor, but he, as you might expect, viewed his "betrayal" in a different light, hoping to see his nation freed from partisan tyranny and made whole again with a government that could represent all of its people.

I have lived under several different presidents in my life, and never have I agreed with all of their policies. However, even in my darkest hours, I have never entertained the thought that I could one day turn traitor upon this country. But now is different. Now, we have a president who openly encourages white supremacists and who mocks survivors of sexual assault. Now, we have government agencies rolling back protections for individuals in the name of removing "burdensome regulation," even though American companies are reportedly doing better now than they have in the past decade. Now, we have an internal policing agency placing immigrant children in cages and deporting their parents. And now, we have a Senate that has eagerly embraced a nakedly partisan hack and promoted him to a job that should be reserved only for those who believe that justice and truth just might lie beyond the narrow prescriptions of a political platform. In other words, you have de-legitimized the U.S. Supreme Court, and in the process you have also de-legitimized your own position as a U.S. senator. You have made it clear that the interests of Arkansans and Americans as a whole do not lie within your purview, and thus you have made it clear that you only represent members of the Republican Party. I therefore see no reason to appeal to you in the future.

Goodbye, senator. You will not hear from me again.

Guy Lancaster Little Rock

Not violent

[wealdthemagiceater-blog]

If You Are Willing

Once upon a time I was a normal 12 yo. It was so fantastic. I was friendly and outgoing. Why are there always dark things? Why are there always ugly things? 

My father was dealing with bad things. He was a manipulator. He made all of us feel like we couldn’t say or do what we felt. I spent so many hours held up in my room, covering my ears. Letting the words bleed out of the walls of our house. I got caught in the rush of the blood clot. I heard so many horrible things. I don’t understand why things could never be explained. When he left, he took the blood. When he left we felt free. And what a sad thing it is that my family that I thought was perfect was rotten down to the very core. Up until I was 13 I thought everything was going to be okay.

When he left, he still wanted contact with us. He gave us things and talked to us more than ever before. I gave in. I let him send me gifts. I saw him on Christmas. Is that something I should have kept from him? I don’t respect him, but does that mean I can’t forgive him? I believe it was my duty to forgive. It is not my duty to condemn. 

Fast forward to when I turned 16. I felt like boys were a priority. I wanted to be loved and held. I felt like I could find comfort in love. I felt like I could be whole if I could only be consoled. I was so horribly wrong. What you have to know is that I was very careful with who I was around. I didn’t just allow anyone in my zone. At all. 

There was a boy who was so nice to me. He listened. He smiled. He said nice things to me. He did nice things for me. I felt beautiful. 

That first kiss was almost aberrant. I thought I fell in love. I thought it was real. 

The first hit was less than extraneous. I thought he would grow out of it. I thought it was merely a side effect of anger.

No. Shoving and hitting and being violent or angry is not right. Excusing it was my fault. Letting it continue was my fault.

For a year I let him do it. For a year he was disloyal. And though I know that I was only a 16 year old, I should have said something. I thought I was a big girl. I thought I could handle it. I thought I thought I thought. I could have done something. Back then people would tell me that I was being silly, that I wasn’t making good choices being with him. I have always been the kind to want to see that people are good. I told them all that he was just confused, that he just lashed out sometimes. He was just immature a little bit. I just wanted him to be happy. I tried so hard to help him be happy. We would smile. We would laugh. I was there always for him. I was there. For him. 

Why would you do that? Why did I do that? My calling is to be sensitive to people’s needs. I don’t know why. He’s doing better now. He’s serving and being helpful and happy. He got rid of porn. He stopped feeling up girls for the fun of it. He fought the feelings. We both had bruises. He’s gone now. Never again would I let someone touch me, or hit me like he did. It was horrible. It was painful. I am still hurt because of it. But he was given grace and friendship. Was that something I should have kept from him? It was my duty to be a friend when he needed a friend. Now he can say that he had a friend, something that is not often granted to those that really need them most.

Be honest. Was I in the wrong to be a friend? Even when he treated me like I was roadside garbage. 

He left just like that. Just like I was never there. Not a word, not a sound. Nothing.

Fast forward again to when I was nearly 18. Not very long after. I was alone. I prayed for days that I would have a friend. That someone would come along and be my friend and be in my life to be in my life and come to know me, and want to be around me. 

Then that is exactly what happened. He talked to me. He came to me. He asked me my name. I played the piano for him. It was something out of a movie. I cried in his arms. I relied on him. He was my very best friend. Then one day something happened that was so deceiving and covert that I did not realize what was happening until today. 

I let my guard down. It was a different kind of touch. I let him do things that I should not have let him done. I thought it was love. It never went so far that I completely let myself go, but it went far enough. I became his relief. He had problems. He was obsessed. But he controlled it enough that it felt right. He told me over and over again that it was okay. That we shouldn’t tell anyone. That it was wrong, but should be kept secret. I did things for him. I was consented. I made the choice. 

He took advantage of me. All I wanted was love, and that’s what I thought it entailed. I was naive. I was silly. I was confused. I was so wrong. I was so stupid. He was so good at manipulating me into thinking that everything he was doing to me was okay. 

No. It was ugly. It was demeaning. It was futile. Some of his last words to me before he left was that I couldn’t be part of his life anymore because I wasn’t close to God. God was my only friend. Damn. He screwed me over. He made me believe that I was a bad person.

His mother. His mother was pretty much constantly on methamphetamines, or cocaine. She would beat him physically, and she would neglect his needs. She would purchase marijuana instead of food. She made him homeless. She called him names and always blamed him for all of the bad things that would happen. She would cuss him out. She was the worst person and mother I have ever been around. His father left her for understandable reasons. He has been alone his whole life. I gave him the only true love he’s ever known. Yes. Despite everything he did to me, I loved him with my whole heart. I loved him for his character and his bravery. He wasn’t inherently a bad person. But his extenuating circumstances made him see the world differently in a way that made hurting people like me okay. I am NOT condoning his actions. I am very hurt by the way he treated me. 

But I gave him love. Is that something I should have kept to myself? Is that something that he didn’t deserve just because he took advantage of my virgin body? 

I don’t think so. 

I think they all deserve understanding. I think too often this world is missing the root of the violence. Every person who has gone to the extent of hurting others has been so terribly hurt themselves. They don’t know anything else, but to be angry like their parents. It is only painful for everyone. It was not my job to condemn them. It is only my job to lift and bless. What would it have done if I had been fighting, if I had been lashing out, if I had held grudges or been angry all this time? The only person that would get hurt out of those things would be me. Yes, it’s horrible. Yes, it’s injustice. But is it the horror of my own heart? No, it’s the passion of the love that I’m willing to give whether it’s earned or not. Serial killers are made because of the lack of real love. Is it the injustice of my own mind? No. Because I let it go. It’s only my decision to move on. If I had a chance to go back and relive it all, I wouldn’t change the amount of love or friendship or forgiveness that I gave on those days, in that time of my life.    

It’s my job to teach my children that in a time of anger they should be kind. That at a time of hatred, they should love. I’m a high school teacher and this is what I teach my kids every day. That kid that may be annoying just needs a friend. That kid that says silly things may just need a laugh. Anyone that seems like they don’t fit in are screaming at the world to just let them be part of it. 

Some people like me hate living on this planet because of all the hate that resides on it. Some people like me want everyone to be kinder and happier. Some people like me can’t hate anyone, even if they are killers, rapers, violent, angry. I can’t and I shouldn’t. If you see everyone around you as a potential god then they become different. They glow, they are all beautiful. They are all beautiful humans. We are all part of each other. 

The chain of hate needs to end. The pattern of anger needs to stop. There would be less violence if we would all go home and tell our sons and daughters that they are loved, that they are wanted. 

The next step is to go to our neighbors and tell them that they are loved and that they are wanted. 

Then to strangers. 

The world needs to be loved and wanted. 

Stop the hate. 

Stop the anger.

Stop.

Fast forward to right here and now. Where are you? What are you doing? What are you saying? Did you just end a fight with your mother? Your sister? Did you just gossip about someone at school? Did you send a rude message? How many times have you said “I love you” today? Did you give someone a wave, or a smile? Are you happy? Are you making others happy?

LLAP