Self cleansing

In my previous blog, I talked about helping a friend expose an anomaly in  the neighborhood organization that  my friend and I both belong to. The anomaly revolved around a  contract worth hundreds of thousands of money members of the community have contributed.

In helping my friend write his expose I was also learning more about the circumstances around the shadowy contract.  I saw the sleight of hand, the smokes and mirrors, the manipulation.  I was incensed at how officers of the organization not only betrayed the trust of the many but also put the organization at risk for legal liability. I was furious.

In my rage, I sent a message to one of the perpetrators.  I castigated her. I was sarcastic. I was mean.

"For somebody so brilliant, so knowledgeable, so in control, how could you do something so stupid," I said.

 I even became somewhat physical when I  ended my message with this: "Do yourself a favor and give your manipulators a crisp. hard, resounding smack on the face."

But the satisfaction I felt was only temporary. I was bothered by what I wrote. I was not in a state of love. The "Shadow" had claimed me just as it did the perpetrators of the anomaly. I was horrified at how I was being corrupted.

As I write this, I try to see  with love.  It is difficult and I am still trying,  aware that this is a case of the rubber meeting the road.  If I claim love, I must be in love.  A shift in my heart requires a corresponding mind shift.

 "She is only a victim," I tell myself.

While I do not condone what she did and still believe that she has to come to terms with the gravity of what she has done, if  I shut the door on her I am only a "resounding gong or a clanging cymbal."

Posted with Aloha
- By ARIEL MURPHY

Beauty and beast

For several days until yesterday, I was tied to my computer like a baby's umbilical cord is to its mother. I did not socialize. I  did not surf the internet. I did not log on to Facebook or Google+. In fact I even  deleted the Facebook app from my smarter- than- me cellphone.

I was focused on helping a friend write a memorandum exposing irregularities in the solicitation and award of a bid for a road project. A monstrous darkness  has imperceptibly crept into the community organization in which my friend and I were volunteers. 

The darkness arrived camouflaged  like wolf under sheep's clothing.  Not long after its entry into the organization  its tentacles  were inching their way into the nooks and crannies of the group. Unnoticed by those who didn't know any better, the darkness spawned corruption one after another. Deception and viciousness had a field day.    Hatred was so thick you could slice it with a knife.

Strangely, I both enjoyed and loathed writing for my friend.  I loved exposing the anomalies and indicting the crooks, especially since big money was involved.

But I  did not like how I felt in the course of writing the memo and learning about what happened.  It was as if the very darkness  had wormed itself into my heart. I was getting angry. I found myself thirsting for blood.

Looking back, I remember taking many showers and doing a lot of vigorous scrubbing as if in cleaning my body I could also purify my soul.

The darkness harvested the minds and souls of some people in the community organization. It was about to take mine when the Universe sent help. One lifeline was in the form of a Celebration of Life gathering. The other was a movie called The Book Thief.

Eleanor was in her 90s when she passed on. Although she was an artist and known in the community, I never met her. I was at her Celebration of Life gathering because she was the mother of my best friend's friend.  An eulogy given during Eleanor's celebration of life gathering particularly struck me.  One of Eleanor's granddaughters said that she will always remember her grandmother telling her to be conscious of the things and people around her, find the beauty in them, and create art.

The Book Thief was a deep mine of wisdom and an accurate commentary about the dual nature of man.  The narrator never revealed  his identity but for me he was Death itself.  Death had many memorable lines in the movie. One of them was this.

- Posted with Aloha
By ARIEL MURPHY