I struggle to be outraged or shocked at the events shaking our nation over the past year. I always prefer to see truth come to light. The current and recurring events reveal who we are as a nation, and that revelation gives me more comfort than any pretense of good or better than.

I have never believed the glorification of the foundation of our great nation America. At our core, we are a country born out of resentment and discontent. The founding fathers left a system of government that didn’t serve them, revolted and set sail for new land, stumbled upon America and stole her from native people through intentional acts of genocide, violently went to war against their brethren for their rights, formed a new government that better served their own interests, and build our nation’s economy on the backs of injustice.
This is our country. And it’s not a judgment, just a reality. I am American too, and suffer her freedoms and her wounds just the same.

The truth is, we are a proud and entitled people. We fight for what we feel we deserve. We look out for our own. We fashion our own truths to reflect what benefits us the most. (This is how our great Declaration of Independence could be written, signed, and still celebrated despite originating amidst all manner of immorality and wrongdoing.) We form our own beliefs, and with our freedom to create whatever philosophy or religion that serves us best and makes us the least uncomfortable, we have a created a world for ourselves that makes Justice impossible to be upheld. Justice fails to be a reality when we see the world through a self-serving and self-protective lens. If the very essence of justice is fairness, to stand for it requires a seeing beyond your Self.

The self-evident truths our nation are founded on infect us all and need to be replaced with the only Truth that will set us free… that we are all ONE. Our neighbor is our sister, and our enemy is our brother. The oppressed and the oppressors are one. The cops and the criminals are one. The news reporters and the activists are one. The murderers and the victims are one. The government and the people are one. The rich and the poor are one. The prosecutors and the defendants are one. The young and the old are one. You. And. I. Are. One.

But we cannot see this truth, and there will be no justice and there will be no peace…until we experience a revolution of the heart and the way we see.

So when we cry for Justice, what we are really crying for is Revolution. Because a people whose nation’s founding principles are rooted in self-interest, can never be rightly concerned with equity, fairness…Justice. And that is why there will be no justice until there is peace. Because there can never be justice without, until there is peace within.