The Shooting

The day before I arrived in Minneapolis last week, a man was shot by a policeman. The whole city was in shock. The pain everybody felt was expressed with grief, anger, fear or sadness. Blame and judgment, defense, the desire to understand and the dwindling hope it would not be true lay in the air.

During my homeopathic lecture the next day, someone asked: “What is your take on the shooting?” For a moment I was perplexed. I was prepared to answer questions concerning my homeopathic lesson but I did not have an answer for this question. However, it was definitely the most important question that everyone in Minneapolis, in the US and beyond was thinking about that day. The man of colour was dead, and he was obviously innocent. It ripped a wound into the heart of the nation, as did the killing of five policemen in Dallas the next day.

Both men were scared, otherwise they would not have carried guns. Racial prejudices and fear are not the privilege of the policeman. Do most of us not feel threatened from time to time? In a situation of fear, can we be sure that we would not overreact? Maybe these men represent a part of us all. Maybe they acted out our fears. We all got wounded that day. And maybe I have a share in the responsibility for what happened.

Now let us go beyond blame and pity.

The plains tribes have a ceremony, called the Sundance. I have been at many Sundances with my adopted Blackfoot family. The dancers are being pierced, and they dance for four days without food or water. They use pain, hunger and thirst to enhance their prayer, to open up for Spirit. Other cultures know this too. The German poet Jean Paul once said: “Heaven and our wound are open, and both are one and the same”. What he says is that our pain and challenges in life are not an obstacle on the spiritual path, they are our spiritual path.

So the question is: Can I accept the pain, can I even open my heart in the pain? Or do I shrink back, shut my heart in an armour of blame and pity, excuses and explanations?

It is our woundedness that can allow Spirit to enter us if we allow it.

We cannot change what happened. We are left with the responsibility to do something about it. When we can connect the event on the outside with our heart, then we have the chance to transform it. Our heart is the great alchemist, is the great transformer. What we feel, we can heal.

I want to ask you to pray tonight for both sides, the policeman and the victim. They both need our love.

If there is any grief, any old trauma in your body or in your soul that does not want to heal, consider homeopathy. Homeopathic remedies can help us to forgive ourselves and others. Once we can forgive, bitterness and hate can subside and healing can occur.

Feel free to contact me at Roland@VancouverIslandHomeopathy.com.