killers

I had a meeting downtown today. The long drive back to work through a complicated stretch of construction was slow. Car jockeying in between other cars is not too much a sport here -- in DC it is a way of life. But some of that was going on.

Car jockeying is the dangerous pulling in and out by drivers determined to push ahead of other cars, squeezing in between too tight spaces, bullying into lanes. Throw a little competitive anger between a couple of different drivers and it can spiral out of control, ending in potential wrecks and death.

Today somebody stops in front of me and then turns left without using their signal light. I hit the brakes and curse under my breath, and almost instantly remember walking in downtown Austin many years ago returning from noon communion at St. David's on my way back to work. That day I was almost run over by a car that turned into the crosswalk where I was walking on a busy downtown street. I cursed then and was immediately struck how quickly my mood changed from the reverence and quiet of noon communion to my instant anger at a careless driver.

If David Chase, the creator of HBO's The Sopranos is anything, he is a moral philosopher, often pointing out that no matter how entertaining or interesting is the lives whose stories he is telling, they are mad animals, ready to strike out and kill. This is who we are as humans, something we don't like to think about much.

Father Jake recently reflected on the beheading in Iraq of Nick Berg, the young American, that was videotaped and released to the world. He wrote:

As I have mentioned before, my life experience has made it clear to me that I am a killer. I suspect that in the dark interior recesses of most people resides a killer. Humans are capable of cold-blooded murder.

He wrote that there is a thin line between choosing to act out one's anger or not, and that he believed one is held accountable for crossing that line.

What I understand separates me from the rest of the animal kingdom is my conscious awareness of God. That awareness calls me to rise above my animal nature. That awareness calls me to a higher standard. That awareness informs me that the shedding of blood, the release of the nephesh, the life-force, is always a tragedy, is an act that grieves the heart of God, and makes this world a little smaller.

I am a killer that now refuses to kill, not because I am unable, not because I am weak, but because I am obedient to my Creator, the Life-Giver.