Well, I’m furious.  How dare another person full of hate and fear – propagated by ancient fundamentalist patriarchal religious dogma, in this case ISIS – murder our people?  Yes, “our people.”  Yours, mine, ours.  The people in that night club in Orlando, Pulse, belong to all of us. 

How dare Omar Mateen kill our people?  If you do not think of gay people as your people, you may want to reconsider.  About one out of 20 humans is born gay or bisexual or transgender, so every single human on the planet has a “gay” relative somewhere in the family.  If your person hasn’t come out to you, then you might want to look at that.  There’s a reason they are afraid to.

I am feeling afraid today.  That was, of course, part of the motivation for this kind of hate crime.  Just as when any man rapes any woman (not the only but certainly the most common form of sexual violence), it sends a ripple of fear into every woman.  Just as any act of racism against an individual confirms fear in people who are part of that population.   Consciously or unconsciously, we all become a little afraid again, reminded again that we need to be cautious, to somehow try to take the responsibility to prevent something bad from happening to us. To somehow magically make a hater not hate us.

Any event of violence of any kind enforces that we are not truly free.   And so it is with this crime against people in the gay club in Orlando.  All of us who might have been in that club or at some other gay club on in some gay Pride parade at any time, ever, this weekend or any other time in the past or future, now feel more fearful.  Again. 

This time is full of grief and anger, all mixed together.  I know better than to despair.  There is no point in that when I know that when things feel really bad, they are – to our human selves.  Things feel very bad, and horrible and frightening and disgusting.  Terrifying.  “Atrocious,” as my mother said.

And, as always, we have a choice to make.  Fear causes contraction.  The other choice is expansion.   The other side of fear is freedom and peace.

Souls do not despair.  Souls expand. 

Let us chose to expand at this time:  to literally breathe deeply and expand our hearts again, to send love to the families and friends of those affected by the Orlando massacre, and to connect with our own loving Souls on behalf of expanding freedom and peace on this planet.  I’m going to meditate on freedom and peace replacing fear.

And while we’re at it, let us also expand our automatic rifle gun control laws.

P.S.  Good stuff happens in Orlando, too.  Here are the winners of the recent 2016 National Pie Championships:  http://www.piecouncil.org/2016APCChampionshipWinners