violence

“I have set before you life and death,

blessing and curse:

therefore choose life.”

(Deuteronomy 30:19)

“Yet when we ‘choose life,’ we quickly confront the reality of a culture riddled with violence. By violence I mean more than the physical savagery that gets much of the press. Far more common are those assaults on the human spirit so endemic to our lives that we may not even recognize them as acts of violence.

“Violence is done when parents insult children, when teachers demean students, when supervisors treat employees as disposable means to economic ends, when physicians treat patients as objects, when people condemn gays and lesbians ‘in the name of God,’ when racists live by the belief that people with a different skin color are less than human. And just as physical violence may lead to bodily death, spiritual violence causes death in other guises—the death of a sense of self, of trust in others, of risk taking on behalf of creativity, of commitment to the common good. If obituaries were written for deaths of this kind, every daily newspaper would be a tome.”

Parker Palmer, A Hidden Wholeness—The Journey Toward An Undivided Life, pp. 168-9