I just finished reading Jacinda Ardern’s book A Different Kind of Power.

Even as a child, she asked “Why?”   

On March 15, 2019, in Christchurch, New Zealand a terrorist attacked a mosque killing forty-nine people and leaving others in critical condition.  He had acquired his weapons legally.  Following the response of Australia in 1996 to a mass shooting, where the conservative prime minister of the time, John Howard, moved quickly to ban “pump-action, semiautomatic, and automatic weapons”, New Zealand responded by reforming their gun laws in ten days.

And here we are in the U.S, not responding but instead reversing on the orders of a man who has not fought in any wars, and now decides to change the name of the Defense Department to the Department of War.

Tom Hanks was to be honored by West Point for his work supporting veterans.  Thanks to Trump, that’s cancelled because Hanks supported Biden, not him.

Responding to Trump, West Point recently rehung a 20-foot portrait of Gen. Robert E. Lee, a West Point graduate who fought to preserve slavery for the Confederacy.

Asking ourselves why, perhaps we can reverse this daily travesty changing history, ethics, compassion, understanding, kindness  and morality.  

A friend shared that she’s been feeling “like a feeling painting”, with tears flowing easily, and then said as she reaches to receive and honor her inner knowing, “It’s something about being pulled up out of the mud and placed vertically on the earth.

May her words guide us as we align, and listen to Peace Train by Cat Stevens and Imagine by John Lennon.