Quieter reflection

Geraldine Hawkes of St Paul City Ministry calls us to pause for a moment and remember Van Nguyen, his mother and his brother, his friends…..and all those whose lives are affected by illicit drugs….let us acknowledge the need to hug and to be hugged…to love and to be loved…. “if I love my brother, then my love benefits my own life as well, and if I hate my brother and seek to destroy him, I destroy myself also”.
And reminds us of Tom Merton's comments in his preface to No Man is an Island:

Death cannot be understood without compassion. Compassion teaches me that when my brother dies, I too die. Compassion teaches me that my brother and I are one. That if I love my brother, then my love benefits my own life as well, and if I hate my brother and seek to destroy him, I destroy myself also. The desire to kill is like the desire to attack another with an ingot of red hot iron: I have to pick up the incandescent metal and burn my own hand while burning the other. Hate itself is the seed of death in my own heart, while it seeks the death of the other. Love is the seed of life in my own heart when it seeks the good of another.

Thomas Merton, Preface to the Vietnamese edition of No Man Is an Island