Attack in Orlando: trigger warning

[Jdog]

As I sit listening to the details of the horrific attack which took place last night in the gay nightclub in Orlando, Florida, I send wishes for healing to the entire community.  As of this moment, the shooter's motives are unknown but as a lesbian, I have a strong feeling that homophobia plays a role. 

Prayers for the families of the more than who lost their lives, prayers for the 50 plus who cling to life in hospitals, and prayers for those who will have PTSD from having witnessed the event.

I take my personal safety for granted much of the time, despite having hypervigilance from childhood attachment problems.  I think that incidents like this make me question how safe a I am, on the one hand, and require me to send peaceful thoughts to everyone, on the other hand. Seems like a good mediation focus for the coming days.

[Daughter of Light]

Thank you for this post, Jdog. Sending peaceful prayers of healing to the whole community. It is hard to feel safe when there are people (monsters) out there that want to inflict harm on others.

The Stanford case has been triggering me consistently since I heard about it. I feel I take my personal safety for granted too, but it truly isn't our fault we're affected this way. And never means we don't care or have compassion and empathy for others.

Again, thank you for sharing. I know I will be meditating on this later.

Fondly,

~Daughter of Light~

[Danaus plexippus]

I have decided to stick with love. Hate is too great a burden to bear. Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that. Love is the only force capable of transforming an enemy into a friend.

Never succumb to the temptation of bitterness. Let no man pull you so low as to hate him. Nonviolence means avoiding not only external physical violence but also internal violence of spirit. You not only refuse to shoot a man, but you refuse to hate him.

Forgiveness is not an occasional act it is a constant attitude. We must develop and maintain the capacity to forgive. He who is devoid of the power to forgive is devoid of the power to love. There is some good in the worst of us and some evil in the best of us. When we discover this, we are less prone to hate our enemies.

We must learn to live together as brothers or perish together as fools. Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly. I can never be what I ought to be until you are what you ought to be. This is the interrelated structure of reality. - Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

[CP66]

I can't say that I've ever taken my personal safety for granted; not that I'm concerned about anyone in my life now hurting me, but I just don't take it for granted. What the people in Orlando have suffered is atrocious. My thoughts and prayers go out to those killed or injured and to their families. It angers me that so much of the shooter's actions are being perceived as being about a religion. This dismissive labeling leaves the much bigger issue of the shooter's mental illness left unaddressed. To my mind, of course these kind of control freak people are going to respond to these kind of terror groups. I'm neither gay nor Muslim, but from my point of view, the real issue is that this person was seriously and obviously mentally ill. Today, I read an interesting article on the correlations and patterns of thinking and behavior between domestic violence and mass shooters in the New York Times. The only thing that troubles me about it is that the perspective seems to be that only women are abused and men are always the abusers. In spite of my own history, where I was diagnosed with PTSD when I was 17, and "due tot the ages and stages" I acquired it, it has been something I've had to deal with in some way my whole life - I recognize that abuse isn't gender-specific and this perception of it leaves men in a very bad position. Granted women, being smaller, have other ways of being abusive than sheer brute force, although some are physically abusive, too - some women have the same control freak mindset. Women can be abusive, too. Nobody gets to tell them no and everybody is going to do what they want or else. And if society doesn't start recognizing the mindset and behavior regardless of gender (or social position, etc.,) how are we ever going to end this? How are we ever going to get a mental health system that can actively heal or help both the abused and the abusers? How else are we going to end it? Here's the article that I'm talking about. http://www.nytimes.com/2016/06/16/world/americas/control-and-fear-what-mass-killings-and-domestic-violence-have-in-common.html?src=mv&_r=0

[Dutch Uncle]

The Orlando attack is horrific. Yet, IMHO, this attack, and many other attacks, are deliberate done, consciously done, and done for a purpose, with a clear objective.
I purpose I certainly don't agree with, to put it mildly.
I am vehemently opposed to the purpose, to be honest.

I will post some stuff here below in ***trigger warning*** practically unreadably text, unless you highlight it.
People are speaking out about this matter, and I think they deserve to be heard.
Here it is. Some of the things said in the links I post, are very derogative of LGBT. Those who say it, mean it:
It's pretty clear why this attack was made. Why these LGBT people were willfully murdered, purposefully murdered. The people who do this, the ideology that not only 'inspires it', as it is euphemistically called, but that actively asks, if not demand, people to perpetrate these hideous and (thank god secular justice) criminal acts need to be confronted and stopped. By any civilized means we have to our disposal. I am personally a big fan of Sam Harris, a neuroscientist who is an outspoken advocate on human rights over religious rights. He has said many things on the Orlando-massacre and the political reactions (or lack thereof), but I want to share this shocking Vlog: Sam Harris discusses Islam, Orlando and the reaction from Trump, Clinton and Obama
I could not believe my ears, but there or other sources of the Imam saying the horrific things he does: Muslim Imam in Orlando called for death to gays before night club attack. This man may be preaching a minority view, but as Brigitta Gabriel once famously pointed out: The Peaceful Majority are IRRELEVANT.
As long as we refuse to address why this was done, and why we oppose this, it will continue.

[Danaus plexippus]

First they came for the Socialists, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a Socialist.

Then they came for the Trade Unionists, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a Trade Unionist.

Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a Jew.

Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.

- Pastor Martin Niemöller at The Hague's Grote of Sint-Jacobskerk in May 1952

[Jdog]

There will always be mentally unstable people who violently attack others, often due to their own hatred of themselves and inability to resolve whatever inner conflict they are feeling.  It is my opinion that the murderer was himself bullied or made to feel less-than at some point and this triggered his already unstable psyche.  Not everyone who is emotionally unstable becomes violent, and not everyone who is a victim of bullying and hatred becomes emotionally unstable.  But some do fit into the portion of the Venn diagram where these things come to a point of joining together.  To me, the combination of a violent and untreated mentally ill person along with easy access to assault weapons was the fatal mixture.

I care little about the hatred that is spewed toward the LGBTQ community in the wake of this tragedy.  There is a pastor (so called) right here in my city who is getting worldwide attention for his hateful support of the crime committed in Orlando.  Fortunately, there were people protesting his prayer service on Wednesday and over 1,000 are expected to protest his Sunday services.  There are more good people than bad in the world, and that fact gives me a lot of comfort.

[arpy1]

I have decided to stick with love. Hate is too great a burden to bear. Danaus that is so beautiful i am adopting it for myself. thank you.

my thoughts are with these people in Orlando who have borne such a terrible cost of others' hatred. may their families and loved ones find the grace inside themselves to 'stick with love' too and not allow the haters to win.

thought also are with Jo Cox's family (the British MP killed by hate this week) especially her little ones and her husband. i don't understand how hate can so consume a person but i suppose it must for them to be able to justify these actions.

i refuse it. i will not become a hater. the human cost is too great the world over. 

[Jdog]

Yes!  Standing on the Side of Love!  Thanks for the positive thoughts, as those are the ones that attract more positive energy.