Awash in Violence and Grief

I understand now the utility of religion in a way that I never have before.

(Francois Mori/AP)

I know that many human beings on this planet suffer greatly daily, and have done for a long time

(Boris Horvat/AFP/Getty Images)

without hope for respite, relief, improvement, change.  I had always had hope for them, even if they could not have it for themselves.......

(Eric Gaillard, Reuters - all pics via the Guardian)

The past year of atrocities and trauma have caused me to lose optimism.  I know that I am not alone, that you, like me, just want it to stop.  Please stop.  But when?  But how?  The "Powers that Be" who run our world these days seem utterly incapable of finding ways to stop the pain and the destruction.  

We churn out violence and fear in our political spaces, media and "entertainments" and merchants of war flood our neighborhoods with weaponry.  Our political leaders seem blind to the chaos and seem only to create more of it, and work for the enrichment of a careless few.  It's o.k. to be ugly to each other.  It's o.k. to hate.

The Hating.  I hate it.  

It is in this pit of desperation that I understand that when it feels you have nowhere else to turn, but a great need to turn away..............appealing to a higher power feels to be the only hopeful remaining option.

Please GOD, please GODS.....make it stop.  We are better than this.  We have better things to do than to destroy ourselves and our beautiful world.  Please make the ugliness go away.