namaste

namaste is a hindu expression which has many meanings in context... here are a few of them:

• The Spirit in me meets the same Spirit in you.
• I greet that place where you and I are one.
• I salute the Light of life in you.
• I receive the free spirit in you.
• I recognize that within each of us is a place where peace dwells, and when we are in that place, we are One.
• My energy salutes your energy.
• The life in me sees and honors the life in you.
• May the life within you be strong.
• The light within me sees and honors the light within you.

we're so sheltered in america... there are wars going on in other countries every day, but we don't see it, we don't feel it... at least not on a daily basis... perhaps its on the news, but we learned to tune that out years ago when our fathers had it on all night long...

12 years ago, on april 19, 2005-- i was a little fourth grader on the way to a building very near to the alfred p. murrah building.... i'm pretty sure i have the full story of that day elsewhere on this blog... and when the bus i was on jumped, and we were informed there was a bomb, not one of our little fourth grade minds could fathom what actually happened. Here we are again... mid-april... and we can't fathom what has happened, in another small college town, very similar to my own norman... the quiet kid in class that no one ever would have suspected ended the lives of 33 people he didn't have anything to do with... Beautiful, smart, senior-itis infected, or fresh-to-college wided-eyed kids. We never realize it could happen to us-- until it does... and then we just can't understand it...


i know this may sound a little wierd, but its something that has sorta stuck with me in my head. in eighth grade, we read this poem about a mushroom that was quietly looked over every day, until one day he got a whole mushroom army together and conquered the world. the moral of the poem was something along the lines of don't disregard the quiet ones, they'll take over the world... or that they are plotting... or they're terrifying... anyhow... scary quiet mushroom army... we used to make fun of the poem saying things like "oh...so and so is being quiet in class... they may be plotting to take over the world... beware!" yeah, we were dorks... anyhow... that poem sorta came into my mind again when i heard about Cho Seung-Hui. Quiet kid, dark writing, but no darker than anything the video games all the kids plays has instilled. then all of a sudden, he cracks, and kills himself, proving nothing, because all we know is he was on a blood-mission... there was no point... if he was sick of being overlooked, he would have done better doing a tap dance in front of the buildings, then he would have been alive for everyone to recognize him.

its scary... its scary to think of how we interact with people and whether we disregard them or whatever... how that really affects them in the longrun... and what those desperate people are capable of doing.

virginia tech... i've never been there, i know some people who have gone there, i've seen the faces of those murdered, and although i've been in the surprising situation as well, where too many people die for no reason at all, its still unfathomable to me.

students at virginia tech-- i hope you can go on from classroom to classroom in peace... i hope you will keep the memories of your wonderful friends alive... and i hope you will see that we are all against this vicious and ugly murder... and i hope you will begin to speak out against murder and war in all senses and all over the war. its never okay and its never going to be understood.

so... may the life within you be strong.

namaste.