Knowledge at Our Fingertips; You Ain't Seen Nothin' Yet

We have spent the first half of June exploring concerns and dangers of our ever-emerging digital world.  This is the first of four articles which looks at the incredible benefits it brings us. There are plenty of reasons to celebrate.

Learning things, gaining knowledge, and wisdom which came with great patience and effort only a few years ago now lies at our fingertips.  Information once stored away at libraries and museums is just as easily accessible as your favorite television show.  Poetry, literature, art, science, and technology can be studied and explored at a whim from the comfort of home. How miraculous and exciting to live in such an age.

Some of my grown children and spouses make a living in the technology fields.  One is a Data Quality Manager, another Director of Technology Recruiting and a third is an Account Executive Manager of Cloud Technologies.  Our son, who just came back from an international convention in Nashville, was explaining to us how a new program solves logistic problems as easily as organizing Lego's.  His father-in-law, an accounting professor, chirped in that he was lost in whatever Steven was describing.  Though not exactly lost myself, our techy pro was telling the story of languages and applications which mystify me in so many ways.

I am no neophyte to computers.  My experiences began with them back in early 1971 when, as a young behaviorist working with troubled boys, I learned Fortran in an effort to use computers to predict adolescent behavior.  It didn't work.  My guess is that even the newest programs and languages explained by our son couldn't accomplish that heady task.  But you never know. Long story short, I was hooked on the burgeoning technology right then and there.  Over the years I have modernized hospital communications between treatment teams using personal computers, created programs to diagnose the severity of addictive illness while inventing individual strategies for recovery, and on and on.  But here I am today, swimming in a sea of technological evolution which overwhelms my head, heart, and gut.  Extraordinary wonders await us which are just around the corner...and we are at that corner already. It is developing at lightning speed and not a single aspect of life is devoid of tech influence and guidance.

Five Awesome Digital Wisdom Revolutions

1. Human Brain Project: Research neuroscientists are mapping the brain creating a 3D atlas stitching together thousands of brain cross-sections showing details as small as a human cell. This will advance neuroscience medicine in ways unimaginable a decade ago.
2. Three Dimensional Printing: Architecture, engineering, medicine, aerospace, and the auto industry (to name a few) are all using this amazing technology to make things in new and innovative ways.  Home users are creating projects that are mind-blowing.  You can get an industrial grade 3D printer on Amazon for $1,500 and have it shipped with a guaranteed delivery date in four days.  Yikes.
3. E-Learning for Anyone: It's not just for school kids anymore.  E-Learning (technology-based learning) is an industry that has been embraced by schools, corporations, teachers, and students of every ilk. Lee Ann Obringer, Communications Director of The Walking Classroom Institute says that "E-learning is to classroom learning as cell phones are to a pay phone at the bus station." It provides self-paced programs at low cost in convenient locations with continually updated content. What a benefit for traditional and non-traditional learning milieu.
4. Artificial Intelligence: AI is the replication of human intelligence by computers.  The technology allows machines to learn from experience in part by recognizing patterns.  New Deep Learning software recognizes speech, identifies images and makes predictions.  Self-Driving cars, medical diagnosis, nanorobots, design/security systems, and personal assistant robots (here comes C-3PO) are all on the AI horizon.
5. DNA Engineering: Gene editing technology is giving scientists the ability to change our DNA. They can add to, edit or remove genetic material.  There is such great interest in this miraculous medical engineering as it offers new hope in curing diseases such as cancer, sickle cell, mental illness, and HIV among many others. Ethics concerns are valid of course and have halted research in many countries.

There is a seemingly endless list of dynamic digital technologies happening and developing right now.  Managing them in our micro and macro lives are daunting.  Each of us is responsible to the extent of digital impact on ourselves and our families. But one thing is certain...our reality is changing dramatically and will continue to change regardless of any effort to slow it down.  I suggest this...Hold on and enjoy the ride.

Digital Life; Challenges of A New Frontier

The topic we are investigating in June is "Mastering Our Digital; Recovering the Real World."  In a series of four articles and four follow-ups, our hope is to better grasp the nature of this barely charted course before us in order to maintain at least one firmly planted foot in the material dimension where we live and breathe.

We have a dilemma. Portable screens, social media, internet gaming, virtual reality, artificial intelligence, and cable television have intruded to a point that we seem beyond the control of them and of ourselves.  Even elections are compromised by dark forces bent on influencing who we are and what directions governments should take.  It's all pretty overwhelming, especially to skeptical generations which lived most of their lives without these machines. Though the dilemma may appear insoluble, it is not. Or at least it doesn't have to be.  After all, these 'things' are designed to make our lives better.  The quandary is whether we should fully embrace, begrudgingly accept, or run away screaming as this New Frontier of Digital Life looms before us.

There is a wonderful story about President Eisenhower which circulated among my IBM friends back in the early 1980s. Ike had commissioned an early supercomputer for the Pentagon.  When completed, an entire section of one subterranean floor was devoted to the machines.  A master control station was set up behind impenetrable glass walls.  According to legend, the President came to see his creation and asked to be alone with it for a minute.  He typed out this question, "Is there a God?" and the computers all started flashing and whirring.  After several minutes, a single card spits out of its' slot toward Eisenhower.  It said, "There is now."

Bill Moyers queried renowned author, historian, and professor, Joseph Campbell during a 1988 PBS documentary called "The Power of Myth." concerning computers and the role they might play in the future.  Campbell looked over at his computer screen and said: "To me, that machine is almost alive. I could mythologize that damn thing." but went on to say, "The first time anybody made a tool, I mean, taking a stone and chipping it so that you can handle it, that’s the beginning of a machine. It’s turning outer nature into your service. But then there comes a time when it begins to dictate to you." It seems that Joseph Campbell had already foreseen thirty years ago what might happen in a computer age.  But there is no reason to rage against the machine.  With the Eisenhower story and Campbell's warning in mind, what we must take charge of is the extent to which we allow the digital world to dictate our daily life.

Trying to find a good perspective of the digital era involves looking at some of the negative and positive aspects of its landscape as we experience it today.  This is an early stage of technological development really. We have a better chance to guide and adapt now than if we wait very much longer.  I am reminded of the popular modern myth "Game of Thrones" which just finished its' final season on HBO.  Despite a chorus of voices that warned "Winter is coming" everyone procrastinated.  Old ways of dealing with conflicts, security, and enemy threat persisted even when the almost invulnerable White Walkers were in plain sight and civilization seemed doomed. Myths like this one have the power of validating or maintaining a society while providing a path forward (as Campbell tells us). Now is the time for action as we master our digital and recover the real world.

This is the direction we will take over the next four weeks together.  Hopefully, our eyes will be opened a bit and we will be able to better navigate the seas ahead without too much upheaval. Follow the content link on each of the 'concerns and celebrations' below as you experience one of the many wonders of the digital age.  Instant information.

Four Areas of Concern
There are plenty of areas in which we can focus our concerns about modern digital life. These are four which stand out as ones deserving of our attention:

1. Digital Addiction/Electronic Screen Syndrome
2. Personal Privacy and Security/Real Stranger Danger
3. Global Cyber Crime/Hacking our Future
4. Physical and Mental Health/Soft Brains and Bodies

Four Areas of Celebration
It's a small world after all.  Our digital world has connected us in ways we could have never imagined.  People who are not like 'us' become potential friends as we forge into this new frontier.  Here are four of many reasons to celebrate our screens.

1. Wisdom at Our Fingertips; The Future of Research, Learning, and Education
2. Alternative Environments; Family Enrichment by Work-at-Home Providers
3. Social Media; Staying Close and Keeping In Touch with Old friends and Family
4. Medical Miracles; From Diagnosis to Treatment OnLine.

Grief Transformation; Cocoons and Butterflies

We have spent a month together this May delving into grief. From the Five Stages, to coping, and even celebrating.  There is always more to say. But one point always comes to the surface, as it did for my friend Elisabeth Kübler-Ross twenty-five years after an awakening she had three miles from Lubin, Poland at Majdanek Concentration Camp in 1946. The story she told me and recounted in a short book she wrote, The Cocoon and The Butterfly, provide perhaps the best understanding of the transformative power and nature of grief.

In 1992, while helping my patient and friend, Michael, through the struggles he was having with terminal illness and alienation from his family, I had a long conversation with his mentor Kübler-Ross. Her straightforward advice was that he should come back to her ranch in Head Waters, Virginia for a retreat.  Our talk then took another turn as I asked her why she chose to work with death and dying, particularly with children, which had been the focus of her medical career.  For the first time, EKR elaborated with me about her life.  Her initial one-word-response was this; "Butterflies." Then she went on to tell me a story.

In 1946, Elisabeth, one of three triplets born to her parents in Zurich, Switzerland, had at age 19, decided that she would become a physician.  World War II had ended in Europe the year before.  Elisabeth told me she felt compelled to join the International Voluntary Service for Peace in an effort to help decimated communities and provide assistance to countless refugees.  It was her visit to Majdanek Concentration Camp that changed everything.  The SS killed tens of thousands of an estimated 90,000 Jews deported to Majdanek.  Three gas chambers were used to choke the life out of prisoners, many of them women and children.  It was in the children's barracks and at one of the gas chambers that Elisabeth saw the butterflies.  She was sorting shoes on the floor of one of the gas chambers when she noticed the drawings.  Children had used their fingernails and rocks to carve butterfly images on the walls.  Hundreds if not thousands of the etchings were in the barracks as well.  She was shocked, shaken, and bewildered.  How could these little people, condemned to forced labor and death find a place in their hearts to draw butterflies....and Why? Though she did not have an answer, EKR made a decision then and there to become a psychiatrist and to work with children who were suffering and terminally ill. It was in 1971, as she recounted, after sitting at the deathbeds of many hundreds of children that her answer to the Holocaust puzzle came.  She told it to me in these words;

"The little ones were no longer in cocoons.  Now they were butterflies.  They would be set free from the hellish concentration camp. No longer prisoners of their bodies.  No more torture. No more separation from their mothers and fathers.  This is the message they were leaving for me and for all of those left behind.  I have used the image of the butterfly for the past twenty years to explain the process of death and dying."

The pain and suffering of horrific losses have the power to change us and to shape our lives like no other force.  After we descend into the darkness there will come a possibility of liberation.  We see this in the lives of people like Elie Wiesel, a child survivor of concentration camps, who went on to "combat indifference, intolerance, and injustice through international dialogues and youth-focused programs".  We witness the incredible work of John Walsh whose little son Adam was brutally murdered in Fort Lauderdale at the hands of a child molester.  John has gone on to expose every kind of crime as he advocates for justice with his television shows and writings.  Of course, there are many more like Elisabeth, Elie, and John.  They each have been transformed, taken from predictable lives, thrown into a cave of darkness, and have emerged with wings.  They point us to the possibility of new beginnings. They also give us a message that there is something more. Like the children of Majdanek, they signal to us that there is something more powerful than death.

When a caterpillar begins to spin her cocoon the most incredible things begin to happen.  Woven into what appears to be a shroud, the little creature starts a cycle of death.  Then, in an unexplainable moment, it becomes a goo of nothingness.  From that goo, a form appears and new creation begins to take shape.  Soon, with an incredible struggle that empowers its wings, a butterfly breaks forth from the cocoon.  She loosens, exercises, and then flies into the sky.  What a miracle.  So it is for each and every one of us.  EKR saw it happen without exception when her young patients transitioned from life.  As she was so fond of saying; "Life doesn’t end when you die. It starts.”

Grief Re-purposed; Reveling in Life at the Moment of Death

We continue to explore loss and grief with this third-in-a-series of four journal followup articles on Loss and Grief.  This piece refers back to 'Grief and Celebration; Twins or Pairs of Opposites'.

I just returned from a week-long visit to New Orleans.  The Big Easy is remarkably different from any place on earth.  Celebrations of life are blown out into extreme displays found only there.  Funerals (called homegoings) and weddings alike are known to have jazz band accompaniment through the city with the community of friends and family forming a Second Line parade.

Allen Toussaint tribute in New Orleans ends with a jazz funeral, a longtime tradition that unites communities, irrespective of class, color or background.

Of the major attractions in NOLA, tours of its' historic and storied cemeteries are among the most popular.  We were given a grand tour of three famous last-resting spots by a local haunting expert, photographer, and author, Kristen Wheeler. Our day-long adventure informed me that grief and loss are integral processes of life experience as opposed to an end story of death.

I have visited the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum and many other solemn places of remembrance. But there is no place and nothing like the open experience of life and death in New Orleans.  The community, which suffered such catastrophic losses during Hurricane Katrina in August 2005, has come back like gangbusters.  This is not to say that scars have been erased and pain eradicated.  On the contrary, they are both quite visible.  The resurrection of New Orleans is an effort in the making.  But joy and hope were never blown away into The Gulf of Mexico, starved in the lower parishes, or abandoned in the Superdome. The City Under Water would not drown in a sea of sorrow.

"When the procession hits the street, the songs are played as a dirge. Mournful, slow playing. Music that suits the sad mood of a loved one’s passing. But, a song or two in, the mood changes. The brass band plays the first notes for “I’ll Fly Away,” and everybody sings. Dances. Smiles and laughs. It’s celebratory. It’s a joyful noise. It’s Gospel. Blues. Jazz. It’s music."

Ray Laskowitz, New Orleans photographer

The lessons learned from New Orleans can allow us to re-purpose grief. 

What we can come to believe is that healing for loss and grief starts when we abandon dualistic thinking.  Celebration and grief do, indeed, share the same space.  However, it is more than that.  Along with them, abundance and scarcity, joy and sorrow, fear and love, are all in a kind of circular dance.  And what can be more full of fun than a dance? These things which seem to be opposites are really one and indistinguishable. This is essential to understand because when the dark hours of loss descend, it seems as if the light is no longer present.  Feelings of abandonment and hopelessness can be so overwhelming that we become frozen in time.  The truth that God is with us seems unreal. At these moments we must accept that the dance continues all around us.  We can allow the process of grief because joy and hope are not just coming back someday, they are already present.

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Here is a mindful and gentle way to allow the celebration of life to commingle with grief. 

Choose a short sentence like "Love never fails" or "The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want" and repeat it several times during the day. 

The truth of it will settle into the center of your heart and darkness will begin to accept the dawn. Though this may seem simplistic or mundane, it will actually re-purpose your feelings of grief and enable you one day to dance again.

Grief and Loss; Helping Others Cope

The time comes when those who we love and care about suffer significant losses.  It is important to remember that death doesn't have a corner on the market when it comes to grief and grieving.  Each season of life brings change. And with every change, there is some element of loss. We are needed at these times as well as when a loved one passes on. Some of those life losses are:

• Retirement
• Birth of a Child
• Empty nest scaling down
• Losing a job
• Divorce
• Natural disasters
• Personal injury or health issue
• Financial problems

“Major life changes, even if they are for the best, can still leave a hole in your heart.” ~ Michelle Carlstrom

Of course, we want to provide comfort or give support to our family and friends. But it can be difficult to know what actions would be best when reaching out. While pondering what to do, I propose the following two things as top priorities:

Thing One: Be there. Your first and foremost responsibility is to show up when you live nearby.  There is no reason for a call to announce your coming. If nobody is at home, leave a note at the front door saying you stopped by and that you'll be back later in the day.  You don't have to bring anything but yourself when you do connect.  Sit down with the person and listen.  Touch a shoulder, pat a hand and keep your advice to yourself. For those who live far away, make the phone call and listen, listen, listen. 

Thing Two: Commit. After your initial contact, construct a plan for helping.  It is not necessary to ask for approval from anyone.  If what you are doing is unwanted you'll find out.  Keep it simple and promise yourself to do things beyond the immediate time of loss.  Cook some meals and freeze some more.  Clean up the kitchen. Help pack bags or boxes. Get several 'Thinking of You' cards and send them over a period of weeks.  Take your loved one out to a movie. Have them over for drinks.  Send little care packages if you aren't able to come in person...and keep calling on the phone.

Sometimes good intentions can cause damage.  Mostly it's not so much what we do that hurts...it's what we say or what we fail to do.  The effects of poorly phrased sentiments or unwanted advice can permanently affect a relationship. With that in mind, the following suggestions might be useful.

Five Don't Do's When Trying to Help

1. Don't Minimize. I will never forget being at the funeral of a sixteen year old girl who died in an automobile accident.  A caring neighbor told the mother that she was so fortunate to have the love of her two remaining children.  Minimizing the loss of others does absolutely nothing but offend.
2. Don't Offer. Obviously you should never offer something that you cannot deliver.  But the best practice is not to offer at all.  If you want to do something to help just do it.  Never, EVER, say; "If there is anything I can do, just let me know."
3. Don't Give Perspective. Telling a person who is suffering from a significant loss that life will get better is just careless and cruel.  They may be sure that things can't get much worse, but seeing the light at the end of the tunnel is something that will happen for them in their own time.  They hardly need your view from the mountaintop.
4. Don't Use Condolence Platitudes. Nobody really wants to hear the words, "I'm so sorry for your loss".  It's not about you.  Greet the person, hug, tell them you love them. Avoid phrases like "You are in my thoughts and prayers." Send a prayer card or light a candle. NEVER say that God has a plan. The person is probably not very happy with God when grieving their loss.  In other words...use less words altogether.
5. Don't Stop Coming. Lots of people show up at the time of loss.  Then, a week or so later nobody is there.  This is when you step back in.  There is no time limit to grief.  If you think your loved one is still aching, keep coming by.  A text message or phone call is never as healing as your physical presence.

There is nobody who can comfort and support better than you.  Your strength is in sharing your time and love. Our uniquely individual healing hearts, hands, and ears are exactly what is needed when things get tough.  

Grief and Vulnerability; So Hard to Go There

Someone once told me that vulnerability is what we most want to see in others and least want to be seen in ourselves. Becoming vulnerable can be one of the most difficult and uncomfortable experiences. Exposure of secrets, mistakes, flaws, and sins leave a person open to scrutiny which is hard to bear. We seem to be set up for all kinds of personal loss. Reputations painstakingly built up over long periods of time are rendered precarious or come crashing down in unmendable pieces. The grief which follows is almost impossible to bear.

We live in an age where it is increasingly difficult or even impossible to escape from who we are.  Rabbi Moshe Scheiner recently taught that suicide rates are increasing in adults partly due to the dynamic of transparency created by instant background checks on the internet.  Good names are destroyed every day. Children who suffer the loss of character due to perceptions of peers, bullying and cyber victimization can feel so trapped and hopeless that they consider or commit suicide. Becoming vulnerable can create the deepest feelings of shame when those whom we trust wound us. 

When we are grieving we become vulnerable.  In fact, it has been said that grief and vulnerability go together hand-in-hand.  Either can come first but neither walk alone. The word vulnerable comes from the Latin word vulnera which means to wound.  In our most wounded times, we are laid bare.  Lost is our stature and resolve.  No longer can we appear strong and self-reliant.  Our pain is visible to everyone. This begs a rather obvious solution.  Just never allow yourself to become vulnerable and then the grief would remain private. manageable, and controlled.  Voilà. Unfortunately, there is a horrible downside to that.  If we don't allow vulnerability, we will never experience authentic friendships, belonging, trust, or love. What we all have in common is our brokenness and when the risk of vulnerability is rejected true connections are impossible. If all of this is true then how could vulnerability and grief be so discouraged in our society? I guess because it is just so hard to go there.

Ivan the Terrible and His Son Ivan on 16 November 1581 is a painting by Russian realist artist Ilya Repin made between 1883 and 1885. The picture portrays a grief-stricken Ivan the Terrible cradling his mortally wounded son, the Tsarevich Ivan Ivanovich. The elder Ivan himself is believed to have dealt the fatal blow to his son

Perhaps we could find some answers from Dr. Brené Brown, a research professor at the University of Houston Graduate College of Social Work, author, and popular TED Talk personality. Dr. Brown has made it her mission to explore the power of vulnerability.  She emphases how important it is to dare greatly in order to live life fully and to achieve success. And more can be discovered in the spiritual wisdom of Richard Rohr, founder of the Center for Action and Contemplation who tells us that vulnerability is the path to wholeness and holiness.

In the final analysis, we have to come to the realization that it is not only okay to grieve and to become vulnerable, but it is also necessary.  If we are to heal we must be touched.  The work can never be accomplished alone.  There are big risks associated with all of this to be certain.  But from our perceived weakness will come a new kind of strength. Not the strength of the invulnerable but the strength of love.  For, as scripture tells us, the one who stumbles "shall mount up with wings as eagles; they shall run and not be weary," (See Isaiah 40:31).

Through the Glass Darkly; Our Fear of Strangers

The premise of my journal entry, The Fear That Divides Us, was that many Americans today seem to be overwhelmed by fear of those who are strangers or in some way not-like-us.  Of course, this is nothing unique to our time or generation.  Fear of 'the other' has been around as long as there have been human beings.  Historically, it seems difficult to love and accept those who we cannot relate to or understand.  We are naturally suspicious.

"I think what we're seeing today is just because the spiritual waters have receded and so all the filth that lies at the bottom of human nature, so to speak, is being revealed.  Hatred has always been around.  Obviously, it's human frailty that causes that, and tribalism, and then fear of the stranger." ~ Rabbi Moshe Scheiner Beyond Fear and Anger

Categorizing, diagnosing, and labeling people allow us to disguise our fears by compartmentalizing them.  It allows us the smug comfort of stereotyping groups of individuals so that we are never required to know them on a personal level. Perhaps this is at the root of our crisis of fear in America.  We have insulated ourselves so tightly that it is impossible to know one another.  Our perception of spiritual, philosophical, physical, emotional, and moral otherness has reached explosive proportions.  

The apostle Paul broke down walls of spiritual division and exclusivity by bringing his message to the gentiles more than two thousand years ago.  He understood that the gospel of love was meant for everyone and found getting to know people eliminated fear and created bonds of oneness. Paul discovered the face of God in everyone everywhere. We are seeing through the glass darkly because we cannot bear to look at the stranger face to face. (See 1 Corinthians 13:12).  Our fears will not be dispelled until we are fully known to one another.

Descending Into Fear; Finding Spiritual Wholeness

I recently wrote about how love trumps fear.  Truly, love is the only game in town as far as trumping goes.  We are programmed by our culture to dismiss fear and equate it with cowardice.  When I was a boy, the one who showed fear was called 'yellow' and teased about being a baby.  An image of General George S. Patton slapping a young WWII soldier who was overcome by fear is an iconic example of our disdain for succumbing to it.  Love is not always easy to find when fear shows up.

But love is always present and always ready to be discovered.  Overlooking it is the problem.  We tend to try finding relief from fear by being brave, and by ascending above the troublesome circumstances we face.  Though there might be some validity to rising above fear, the solution is only temporary.  By shoving fear aside, planting it deep inside, and never dealing with it, we are setting up lifelong chronic survival responses. We are trying to grab control and hang on for dear life.  I'm not saying we shouldn't be brave.  I'm saying that there is a time in which we must descend into the fear in order to find our true identity. Love can only be found when our tough exterior is cracked open.

"Up is nowhere special at all, but hidden inside of down. Up is dangerous for the soul, while down is communal and comforting." ~ Richard Rohr

The descent into fear is well chronicled in religion, mythology, and tales handed down to us over the millennia.  The Bible story of Jonah being swallowed by a whale, Luke Skywalker and friends caught in the bowels of a garbage compactor, Jesus' forty-day desert experience, and Muhammad's revelation in the cave Hira, all reveal the necessity of facing our greatest fears by entering into the depths of innermost being.  The result is a mystic transformation.  This is what Joseph Campbell called the Hero's Journey. So, being bold enough to descend into fear leads us to the tunnel of liberation.  This is authentic courage.  It is not made up of violence and retaliation.  It is an embrace of our true selves and hence, a full embrace of infinite love.  In what seems to be brokenness we experience wholeness...and we find God.

Never Numbing Out; Overcome and Carry On

This is the first of four follow-up articles on the many facets of fear including a four-part Interview/Special Report with Rabbi Moshe Scheiner of Palm Beach Synagogue.

After I wrote about the paralysis of fear, its' numbing effects, and resultant feelings of powerlessness, it was pointed out to me that there was another, more intentional, response to fear beyond freeze, fight, and flight.  That response is loving persistence or courageous non-violence. It is evidenced in the Sermon on the Mount, as Jesus called for his followers when confronted by fear and violence to turn the other cheek.  This was not an instruction of pacifism.  Turning the other cheek was about demanding equality from a person of authority. This is the most measured and effective action that can be taken when fear, anger, and aggression show up.

Courageous non-violent cheek turners were named by Columbia University's School of Journalism as 2019 Pulitzer Prize winners on Monday, April 15th. One award went to the South Florida Sun-Sentinel for exposing failings by officials before and after the deadly shooting rampage at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School. Another went to Staff of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette for immersive, compassionate coverage of the massacre at Pittsburgh’s Tree of Life synagogue that captured the anguish and resilience of a community thrust into grief.  These journalists stood strong for their communities and for us all in the face of fear and anger.  They exposed the truth and rejected the lure of moving on to other stories.  They refused to numb out.  The parent of a Parkland victim wrote South Florida Sun-Sentinel after Pulitzers were announced encouraging the paper to continue its' work saying there was still much to be done.  He can rest assured that they will carry on.

It takes a lot of guts to persist, to remain steadfast, and to overcome.  A courageous cheek turner must have the resolve of Gandhi, who when confronted by his jailers with threats intended to invoke fear replied; "They may torture my body, break my bones, even kill me. Then they will have my dead body, but not my obedience.” But this is exactly the kind of response which will defeat fear in its' tracks.  We shall overcome. It is the essence of love.  And love refuses to capitulate.  It will not retaliate-in-kind.  It will not run away.  it will not numb out. Love is an action-choice made by the brave soul who finally rejects all notions of self in deference to the greater good.