Evil's Mirror

"Justice must never mirror evil, Justice must always be a mirror for Evil so that all may see."

How does one define struggle? It seems that we enter to each new experience in life struggling to get out of the previous one. Does one wait for the next great conversation to happen, so that we may be transported out of the existence we so often berate for its condition. The things we carry along, weigh us down so heavily-you see it people's faces. It hurts, you see it in people's art-it hurts. You see it in people's writing (it does hurt). That we struggle constantly to express ourselves to be recognized even through non-recognition, to be accepted through non-acceptance, to be honored through disgrace. The internal conflict grows in some, and it is often debilitating, but I only fear when there is only resolution in their hearts-then one is capable of anything anything. It is this conflict which gives us access to the other, and in other lays the possibility for the transcendent. The other contains that which we cannot see but would be all the richer for us to be able to understand. To be able to see the other as another self-not identical perhaps not even compatible but just to recognize the other (all others even enemies) as one who also shares in inner conflict. This inner struggle which tears asunder that comfort and creaturely satisfaction that comes with blind emotion, the need to check ourselves before we wreck ourselves. To check out the other before the other checks out on us. If we are unable to seek reconciliation with the other we will be forever lost in the immanent, forever stuck in time-to live out our finitude in crass animal-like existence, seeking to take our next meal our next conquest...always seeking never finding. We must have insight if we are to find justice, and we must be willing to look into another's eyes and not to see fear, danger, but acknowledgment, hospitality, reconciliation. We do not have to love each other, that is perhaps a possibility that only exists in the paradise that is promised to us in the afterlife, besides...our embodied, temporal nature will not allow us to love in the way that would be suited to such an expansive outpouring of feeling. We must however learn to really see each other, not as a side or an argument or an enemy but a person struggling with his or her own humanity-struggling to connect to something greater, or at least different. Connecting struggle to struggle, forever. See with the eyes of the other gives us the ability to reflect evil for ourselves and not to recapitulate it in self-justified acts of violence (not just physical violence, despite what the kids say words can definitely hurt you). To see with the other's eyes, even if we do not see it that way ourselves, can serve as a mirror for Evil, and justice does not have to operate like evil-the avenging left hand of justice can be tucked away so that the loving right hand of justice may sweep us away like scared children waking up from nightmares. These nightmares get stronger and though they sometimes frighten us, the power of these nightmares comes from a place that is much harder to locate and one that is much more immediate than fear and that is pain. The pain of failure, the failure to communicate, to connect, to understand. It begins in youth through confusion, a friend's mommy won't let you play anymore with your friend. It continues into adolescence through physical torture, you get beat up or tossed around because they don't like you, even though you have never said anything to them. In young adulthood anger and frustration, why can't they understand, why must they be so ignorant. In later adulthood, disappointment that your efforts though valiant were perhaps in vein. Finally, in the twilight of your existence a small yet very noticeable hole, missing, what is it-this world you are leaving has torn something out of you, has torn that piece of humanity which could have opened you up to the other could have opened you up to the infinite. It has been ripped away by the banality of society. We are wallowing in a filthy lake of hatred and it is eating away at us. We see it coming, we even see it in others (if we are lucky) in their art, in their writing and in their faces...it hurts.