Blown Away by Kindness and Love, Rather than Fear and Hatred | Military Suicides |

Since the last massacre, while Obama talks of setting up legislation to somehow deal with the gun lobby and the NRA’s strangle hold on the U.S. Government, in the meantime, a massive amount of gun sales have been taking place all over the country. Those people who think that they need to preserve their right to have arms to protect themselves against criminals and the US Govt., are buying up every single weapon that they can get their hands on.

On December 21st, I hitchhiked to New York city to spend the day celebrating the winter solstice with other people in Make Music New York – taking place on each solstice. One of the people who gave me a ride, was a man who had just returned from Iraq the day before. He woke up at 5 in the morning, and decided to come to this massive ‘outdoor retailer’ with the intention of buying a weapon. He talked briefly on his cell phone with a friend, to whom he explained that ‘the shelves were almost empty’, so many people had been doing the same thing as he, going out to buy a weapon before his right to do so would be taken away.

Though I didn’t feel unsafe riding with this person, the fact that he had a weapon in his trunk, didn’t exactly make me feel secure. He wasn’t able to go under the river and through the tunnel into NYC, because of this weapon. He had to drop me off outside of it. The next driver who did take me through the tunnel was a taxi driver, who I explained as I waved that I’m hitching, not wanting to pay a cab fee. He said okay, said he’d drop me off as soon as we got into Manhattan. But before he let me out of the car, he insisted that I participate in a prayer with him. He said that he had previously had someone hold a gun on him and shoot him, and he survived, obviously. He explained that he had been blessed by accepting Jesus Christ into his heart. He wanted to ‘pay it forward’ and made me repeat after him, a prayer to acknowledge my sins and to accept Christ into my life as someone who had died for my sins. His intention was to protect me.

It brought tears to my eyes. This very dark skinned man from somewhere in Africa, truly moved me with his words and gestures of kindness; not only towards me, but towards every other individual with whom he had contact- a friend on the phone, people he paid the toll to, some other stranger who he interacted with. He showed so much kindness and respect. I was really somewhat blown away…fortunately not by bullets coming from fear or hatred, but by his love.

Yesterday a 5 second sound bite on the national news (they may have given the subject 10 seconds) mentioned that more U.S. soldiers have died from suicide in the last year, than combat.