Hate Crimes

A man shot up a Unitarian Universalist congregation in Tennessee because, he wrote in a four-page letter, they support gays and other liberal causes (www.uua.org). The police are classifying his actions as a hate crime.

I never thought I could be the victim of a hate crime (except for rape) since I'm part of the white majority. I only hang out with liberals so I forget that my views are not the norm. Until something like this happens. My gut reaction was that the man who did this is just filled with hate and needed a target for his rage. The anger and hate didn't stem from the difference in his beliefs from the UU's; he just needed an outlet for passions he could not control or contain.

I don't know why this distinction is important to me. Maybe because, like the battered woman, the victim--whether a congregation or a woman--is not responsible for the attack, by her actions or political views. The blame lies solely with the perpetrator who justifies in his own mind unjustifiable violence by citing differences in politics, or a dinner late or burnt. There is no acceptable reason to explain his actions and calling it a hate crime seems to tidy it all up with a bow much too neatly.

There is no excuse and there is no reason other than he wanted to express his unacknowledged feelings of powerlessness in the most destructive way possible. Like suicide bombers who use ideology to dress up their missions of death, this was an act of terrorism caused by sheer willfulness, a temper tantrum by a man who refused to accept how life is rather than how he wants it to be.

I get so mad at people who are destructive because it's so easy and quick to destroy what creation has brought about in a process usually arduous and slow. How dare he snuff out in mere seconds the lives of people who worked to make this world a better place through the slow process of social action? How dare he scar children for life with the sights and sounds of violent death right in front of their eyes. How selfish. How small. How pathetic.

Calling his actions a "hate crime" doesn't really help, except to perhaps permit a longer sentence upon conviction. Call his act a "selfish crime," a "crime of a petty and small person." Don't dignify his actions with such large passions, such grand scope. He was a small man committing the act of a smaller soul. May he rot in the hell I don't believe in for all eternity with only himself for company.

Singing For Your Supper

I recently saw, Mama Mia!, that Meryl Streep movie based on the Broadway musical based on Abba songs. I know. Very odd. And so was the movie. I'm not sure how I feel about it.

Sure, I laughed, I cried--but I also winced every time Pierce Brosnan opened his mouth to sing. Surely they could have cast a different aging movie star who had some singing chops. Listening to Pierce sing was worse than fingernails on a chalkboard, and I say that with the greatest respect. The first time he sang, mutters of disbelief spread through the auditorium. On subsequent songs there were groans of despair. Surely that was not the effect the producers were going for.

I know what it's like to sing badly. I had an atrocious musical audition where I had to start over 3 times; I am still so mortified I'm not sure I can ever audition again. But I'm not a professional. I don't get paid for this. The directors of my musical had the good sense not to cast me; where was the good sense on Mama Mia!?

The only thing that made Brosnan's singing remotely bearable was his total commitment to the process. For those of you watching, So You Think You Can Dance, you know the judges are very into "commitment", and "honesty" and the "believability" of the performance. Well, Brosnan sang with passion and commitment, like he knew he was the best Broadway star of the day. I admired that about him, I really did, but in the end I wasn't sure if he was demonstrating acting chops or simply massive self-delusion.

The movie as a whole was like most musicals--a thin plot with people breaking into song at odd moments. The difference between the movie and the Broadway show is that most of the movie stars didn't sing as well as Broadway stars. Plus, I don't think any production works when it's trying to be both sincere and a parody. You've got to pick one and run with it, people. You either laugh with them or at them; you can't do both without feeling like you need a shower to wash away the icky feeling it leaves you with.

So, I hear Roper is leaving Ebert and Roper At The Movies. Maybe that should be my next gig, since everyone knows critics are merely frustrated artists. Maybe my snarkiness is not a measure of my good taste but a cry for help. Go see the movie and you decide. I'll await my call from Mr. Ebert.

The Doctor is In

So I had this skin thing and had to go see the dermatologist. Who was about 12. Male. Incredibly handsome with perfect skin. I hate that. There I am in my undies getting every inch of my skin inspected by Dr. McDreamy. This was not a peak moment for me. The older I get, the more I want my doctors even older. Curmudgeonly would be good, too. No whiff of sexuality at all.

I know I'm not supposed to think about that. But I can't help it. My husband is the only man who sees me naked so I'm not thrilled about stripping down for some random guy, even if he does wear a white coat. I usually try and get female doctors and usually succeed.

Imagine my surprise the time I thought I was getting a female doctor but s/he was a transvestite. That was freaky in its own way. S/He did not make a pretty woman and I wanted to tell him that he wasn't fooling anybody, also that putting on a dress did not a woman make. But, whatever. At least that time I didn't have to get naked. That would have been just too bizarre.

I hate to be one of those cranky old ladies who grills the front line service people before consenting to an appointment, but I'm gonna have to be one the next time I make an appointment. It's just too mortifying to get some hunky young guy checking my vitals. I'm not that Sex and The City gal who can turn any encounter with a man into a Penthouse forum story. Frankly, I wouldn't be surprised if she was really a transvestite. Have you seen her shoulders?

Anyway, the skin thing has been dealt with and I don't have to return for at least another year. By that point, I'll have had time to figure out if it's better to go in matching Victoria Secret bra and panties so I'll feel a little bit of dignity, even whilst in my unmentionables, or if that I should wear my rattiest undergarments so it looks like I just don't care a whit about being seen in my underclothes.

How do you all handle this?

Think and Act Globally

Here's a gem of an organization courtesy of my sister-in-law who has her pulse on ways to make the world a better place. Go to www.kiva.org and you can loan $25.00 to a budding entrepreneur in a developing country. That's right, only $25.00 is asked, and it will eventually be paid back.

I got a gift certificate for my birthday--a great gift, by the way--and I'm still sorting through the 32 pages of people around the world who are seeking capital to start a small business. Of course, my loan isn't all they need. The money is pooled from other donors to create however much start-up capital they need. I can loan money to individuals or collectives, to start businesses in retail or restaurants or machinery repair.

A similar organization is at www.globalgiving.com. I haven't checked out their web page yet but a NY Times article mentioned them in the same breath as Kiva and said the only difference is that Global Giving donates the money outright.

I'm truly thrilled to be able to reach out in this way, helping one person at a time, whose success will create a ripple effect in his/her family and community. Try it for yourself and see just how good it feels.

Mother Love

Dear Mom,

It's my birthday this week, but of course you know that. You remember my birth day way better than I do. I imagine I was naked and slippery and crying. How did you feel? Were you happy I was born, your third child and first daughter?

How come on all my subsequent birthdays, you didn't take more of center stage but let the spotlight shine only on me? Year after year you made my favorite dinner, baked my favorite cake (always butter cake with chocolate frosting) and made sure I had presents. True, it was "my day" but I wouldn't be here to celebrate if it weren't for you, or for Dad.

For years I loved my birthday as the one day I didn't feel guilty wanting life to be all about me. Usually I lived my life feeling as though I had to justify my existence by excelling in whatever it was I was doing. Not on my birthday. On that day I got guilt-free attention for no other reason than I was alive. That was a lovely present in and of itself.

Now that I'm a mother, I can't believe you let me believe that my birthday is all about me. It's not. It commemorates the day I emerged into this world, it's true, but since I emerged from your body, it's also the birth of a relationship that started before I was born. When I was pregnant, I talked to my baby in the womb, sang to her, and told her I couldn't wait to meet her. When I finally did--on her birthday, after 25 hours of labor followed by a C-section without which we both would have died--I felt reborn. I was no longer an individual with voluntary relationships; I was a mother. Permanently. This little person and I were linked forever.

Now that I'm a mother, on my daughter's birthday I want to make her favorite dinner, bake her favorite cake, and give her presents that let her know how special she is, how precious in her own right, and to let her know that I feel that way because it's true, and because I'm her mother. I was there before she was conceived, wanting her, then grew her from a seed in my body until she emerged--naked, slippery and crying. Her birth brought me and her dad great joy, and it's that we celebrate on her birthday.

Was it like that for you, Mom? I tend to doubt it, knowing everything that came afterwards, and a bit about what came before. But maybe, just for a moment, when you first held me in your arms, you felt a link with me, a special connection that resonated in your heart and told you I was your daughter, forever.

I miss you, as I often do around my birthday--and yours. Now that I'm a mom, there's so much I want to talk about, to ask you about. I wish you could have met your granddaughter; she's a wonderful girl and you would really like her. I think I've grown up pretty well; wherever you are I think you would feel that now, despite what you said before.

If you were here you could come to my birthday party, have pizza and eat butter cake with chocolate frosting. Dad will be here but the divorce was long ago and I'd expect you both to be civilized. When I blew out the candles--forty six--you could help and maybe we'd catch each other's eye over the top of the cake and smile, knowing what it means to love both as a mother and as a daughter. I love you, Mom. Happy birthday to us.

A Writer's Life

I don't talk much about my writing--what I'm working on or my writing process. Partly, I imagine it's as exciting as hearing about how I grocery shop. (I menu plan, make a list, buy what's on my list, usually the cheapest brand except when it comes to ice cream, use recyclable grocery bags--repeat once a week).

Lots of writers have sites devoted to their daily struggles and the angst of just being who they are. Not my style. I write like I pee, regularly, in short bursts, with a fairly steady output.

See. I told you that you really didn't want to know.

I write because that's how I understand the world. If I can't put something into words, I haven't processed it fully. Whether it's the sunset, my mother's death, or planting fuchsias for the first time, I can't embrace the experience until I've found words that capture what it means to me.

I also write because I love stories. True ones, which is why I like essayists and columnists both--Barbara Kingsolver and Ellen Goodman come to mind. I also love made-up stories that feel true, or at least should be true--Marcia Willett and Marian Keyes are two current favorite authors. They capture the interior life of ordinary people in ways both poignant and funny.

My motto could be, "I write, therefore I am." The words I put on paper are a record of the life I'm living, and a testament to the world according to Claire. At the end, I will know I have lived because not only was I there, but I've got the paper to prove it and the stories I've left behind.

The Ant Must Die!

I have a happy troop of ants exploring my bathroom. They emerge from an invisible crack in the floor, scurry up the side of the tub and disappear into the space where the chrome of my faucet meets the tub wall. I know they're happy by the way they visit with each other along the way, their little antenna touching their confreres as they pass each other on the way up or down.

Invasion by the tiny critters is typical for summers in our area. The year they showed up in my pantry I took drastic measures, cleaning, putting grains in airtight containers, and putting out ant traps. I don't mind them so much in the bathroom, unless they come out in force, moving up from a scouting expedition to a full platoon. I prefer not to kill them but when there are a whole stream scampering along the tub wall, I get a little grossed out and have to bring out the spray bottle.

I'll do a quick squirt, killing them on contact, then wipe them up with a tissue and flush the whole formerly happy troop down the toilet. Inevitably, there are a few stragglers who wander around in the wilderness calling, "Chet, Dave, where aaarrrrrreee yooooouuuuu?" Those left behind can't even find the scent trail left by their friends because it's been obscured by the deadly spray bottle. I feel so bad for them, weaving about in an aimless search pattern, no longer on the straight and narrow path where they were filled with purpose and a sense of mission. I know just how they feel.

With the loss of their companions, they can't find their way back to the nest or to whatever nirvana lurked behind my faucet. Usually I can only take so much ant anguish before I have to put the stragglers out of their misery, consoling myself that at least they will be rejoining their comrades in whatever passes for ant heaven.

Every time I kill the ants I remember the Buddhist monks somewhere in Asia who lived with an invasion of stinging, biting ants because they were unwilling to break their vows. My ants don't bite, they don't really do anything except share my home but I find myself unwilling to coexist peacefully when the black dots on my white tub become more of a black line. It's not that I don't like ants; I just want them to find another place to live, outside the walls of my house. I also don't appreciate being forced into confronting a moral dilemma every time I see them. My Buddhist-leaning spouse won't kill them and my daughter simply informs me about their existence, knowing that I will take care of it and make sure that all God's creatures are in their rightful place. By default I've become the enforcer, the hatchet man, the ant nemesis.

This is not a role I want. Heroes rarely want the role but are forced into it by circumstances and the unwillingness of others to step up. I'm the Department of Homeland security, wiping out suspected terrorists without needing the burden of proof of actual criminal activity. After all, there's a war on and sometimes we need to forget about the civil liberties of a few for the rest of us to be safe.

Summer in The City

I've figured out what part of my problem is. (And thank you in advance to those who leave helpful suggestions about what the rest of my problems might be).

I'm not working this summer. That's my problem.

I didn't work two summers ago after quitting The Job That Must Not Be Named, but I was doing a show so I was really busy and otherwise preoccupied. I worked last summer, so this is the first summer in ages that I've been home full-time. That by itself wouldn't be enough to throw me.

The other issue is that my child is twelve and really fun to play with--we go for walks with the pooch, go shopping, water the garden, bake chocolate-chip cookies (thank you, Aunt Sarah!), play board games, etc. I'm totally reliving my middle school years when my sister and I used to do all the same things. No wonder I feel out of touch with my productive, goal-oriented, adult self. You try painting your toenails and listening to High School Musical on the stereo with a tweener for company and see if you can maintain the necessary focus to discuss federal habeus corpus for detainees in Gitmo.

I even feel a little whiny; "I'm boooorrrred," slips into my conversation now and then. I get restless but don't know what to do with myself. Chores are harder and harder to get to. What's another day without clean socks? It's summer. I'll wear sandals or go barefoot.

Now that I've diagnosed the problem, I've decided that I don't have to find a remedy. I can re-live my tween years but without the accompanying crush on Matt Sweeney or acne to cope with. On the other hand, I do have wrinkles and a crepey neck so that might balance out the lack of teen skin issues. Other than that, why fight it?

I can embrace this stay-at-home mom stuff, boredom and all, because of the priceless time I get to spend with my daughter who, at this moment, still likes me, still chooses to spend time with me, and reaches for my hand when we go for a walk. No paycheck can compete with that.

A Sign From God

I got kicked in the head by the Universe today. Here's what happened:

A large part of a writer's life is waiting to hear from the world of publishing and agents. I have been waiting for six months to hear from one particular agent. Sometimes I'm in the zone and mellow with it all. Other times, the frustration builds like magma under the earth. I've been in the heart of the volcano lately, despite all the repeated guidance from my Tarot deck to surrender, to be patient, to let go, that my harvest will come.

So, this morning I'm writing in my journal about the frustration of it all, how I just want someone out there to acknowledge that this writing life is the life I'm meant to lead, that I want a sign, I want a call to let me know I'm on the right path. I am completely worked up, calling God out, spoiling for a fight. I am filled with righteous, driven indignation that I haven't been called yet by that agent.

Then I wax metaphorical about how getting "the call" is no longer au courant because of email, texting and IMing, that the likelihood of getting a "call" from God about one's purpose in life is slim because God no longer hits people with lightning bolts like Saul on the way to Damascus to wake them up to their right livelihood, that my history with God is more like reading a series of small signs in the forest, a broken twig here, a crushed berry there. Then, to mix my metaphors, I write that my way of getting divine direction is when God throws up road blocks that force me to turn and go a different direction altogether, until all I'm left with is the current road I'm travelling with no turnoffs in sight.

By this point I'm crying and I'm late for yoga but I figure it'll be good for me to go so I hop in the car, zip through the neighborhood and turn onto the main drag where I am promptly stopped by a police officer for speeding. Yup. Second speeding ticket in six months after 30 years of speeding and no tickets. Who says God doesn't have a sense of humor? She's laughing at me up there saying, "You wanted a sign, Missy? Well, here's a sign for you--SLOW DOWN!"

Now, signs are only recognizable to those for whom they are intended so don't bother to comment on all the rational explanations for this experience. The way it felt is that I opened the channels to the universe this morning through my prayerful journal writing, I asked for a sign, and I got one. It was not the sign I wanted, of course. Being told to mellow out is like a red flag to a bull. But, the advice is consistent with all the other divinatory tools I've had at my disposal so I'm taking it as a message from God to slow down and chill out.

I'll let you know how it goes.

The Fires of Hell

1700 fires were burning in California at one time, according to an interview I read with Arnold. The only one that concerns me at the moment is the Gap fire, the one threatening Goleta and Santa Barbara because I have family there. There's nothing like a personal connection to bring home someone else's natural disaster.

My brother and sister-in-law spent the 4th of July watching the movement of the fire lines, avoiding the smoke-filled air, and downloading evacuation lists. I held vigil with them as I periodically went on the Net and checked on the status of the evacuation orders, or pestered them with phone calls seeking more information. So far, they've been not been under an evacuation warning. Knock wood. Praise Jesus. There is only one God and Allah is His prophet.

Perhaps I'd be better off praying to Kali, the Hawaiian volcano Goddess.

When natural disaster strikes, when the earth revolts on such an incredibly large scale, it's easy to see why the gods are invoked even by non-believers. When I mentioned the startling statistic of 1700 fires burning California to one very liberal friend, she said that God was punishing the gay-lovin', drug usin', free-wheeling, liberal Californians. She was not the first person to make that comment.

The fundis love to see natural disasters as a sign of God's displeasure. I think they really get off on that explanation because it then justifies their whole worldview. It's much more poetic and exciting to think that God is striking down the wrongdoers, giving them a foretaste of the fires of hell that await them if they don't mend their evil ways, rather than the more mundane explanation that California is semi-arid and fire is part of the cycle of nature in the West. Where's the drama in that?

There's no theater in science, which is why apocalyptic worldviews hold sway with the kind of person who has never learned to exercise their critical thinking skills. God punishing the Californians for allowing gay marriage is a narrative explanation that captures the imagination with good guys, bad guys, and awesome visuals of flames licking the heavens. How exciting to have a role in this drama, especially on the side of the righteous. It allows for the illusion of control, too--that I don't have to worry about suffering from a natural disaster because I'm one of the righteous.

Well, it's certainly obvious to those in the path of any fire--or hurricane, or flood--that natural disasters don't pick and choose their victims; it's only a matter of luck and urban planning whether or not you will be caught in nature's upheaval. Let's hear it for the fire fighters who are working tirelessly to minimize the damage, and for the Red Cross that always is there to help pick up the pieces, and to the Humane Society that is there for the animals displaced by disaster. When the earth revolts, the truly righteous are those who use their hands to help, not to point a finger.

Bad Guys

What about bad guys?

That's the rebuttal in my head to my post on the immorality of the death penalty. What about people who commit truly heinous acts and have no remorse? What about those people who have chosen evil as a way of life? Don't they deserve to die? Wouldn't society be better off without them?

There are people in this world who have chosen the path of evil. These are the people who, like the southerners say, "need killin'." I can buy that on both an emotional and intellectual level--that certain people will never change and to protect us from them, they need to be removed from our midst.

Still, I can't quite embrace the death penalty, for two reasons. First, I can't ever seem to let go of the hope of redemption for sinners. Like Mary Wollstonecraft wrote in A Vindication of The Rights of Men, "No man chooses evil because it is evil; he only mistakes it for happiness, the good he seeks." I hold onto hope for the possibility of reform, of healing what is broken in someone who has chosen evil as his good. If we kill the evil doer, there is no possibility of healing.

Second, I still think that those who commit violence, even to protect the innocent, suffer a cost. I feel protective of those who protect us--the soldiers, police officers and other first responders who put themselves in harms way so the rest of us don't have to. It's an uneasy relationship I have with people in these professions. I'm not sure I would willingly take their place unless forced to by circumstance, yet I am grateful for the relative safety they help provide while feeling guilty for the mark of Cain it leaves on them.

Cain, if you remember your Bible, killed his brother and was forever marked by God as an outcast. While not everyone has an uneasy a relationship with the enforcers of the peace, those who "protect and serve" the public often find themselves feeling alienated, misunderstood and sometimes mistrusted by the very people they have pledged to protect. They can feel like outcasts from the very civilization they are trying to sustain, while their own standards of behavior blur to resemble that of the criminals and terrorists they fight against, leaving the rest of us to recoil in horror.

Clint Eastwood made a brilliant study of this aspect of our society in his movie, Unforgiven. I hate violent movies but I totally recommend this one. He explores how a society both depends on and recoils from the people who use force to protect it, and the cost of that violence to their humanity. He also shows how the more downtrodden and powerless members of society are, the more they rejoice in vigilante justice, especially when directed at corrupt stakeholders in the power structures.

It's really an endless cycle. The rebel succeeds in his revolution and becomes the next tyrant to be brought down by the next rebel. It's that cycle I think Jesus was trying to break when he talked about "turning the other cheek." Nevada Barr, the mystery writer and odd Christian writes in her memoir on faith (that I can't remember the name of) that Jesus meant that in turning the other cheek we are saying we will not retaliate, that the violence ends here.

I guess I believe in that principle. I've heard it said that while violence can stop aggression, it can't bring about peace. So, while the death penalty can stop one violent person's life, it won't stop the cycle of violence in our societies or make them peaceful. It is peace I hope for, for all of us clinging to this planet that is the only home we'll ever know. I've also heard it said that all violence is family violence. To execute a criminal is to kill our brother, and even if he "needed killin'," I think it still leaves the mark of Cain on each of us.

A Love Poem

My sister-in-law, a fabulous poet named Sarah Diehl, got me a subscription to The American Poetry Review. I rarely feel worthy to receive such a publication, and I don't always get the poems, but I really liked one by David Rivard from the July/August 2008 issue. It's a love poem, and I have a hard time finding ones I like. I have a book edited by Garrison Keillor called, Good Poems, and he has it divided by sections, one of which is Love, and I don't like many of those. It's hard to find the right tone in a love poem--not too sappy or sentimental, not too abstract or conceptual that the reader can't feel it too, or so particular that the poem only applies to the poet's beloved.

Some of the lines in Rivard's poem--which I've included below--feel too particular to mean something to me, but overall I got such a feeling of intimacy and tenderness in the poem it brought tears to my eyes. The last few lines, a quote from Virgil, I found heartbreakingly beautiful and a perfect encapsulation of the kind of love I've been lucky enough to find with my husband. See what you think:

Forehead

I love you
I know as much as anything
for your courage
so companionably invisible
as it is
that it passes mostly
as simple
good sense. I don't mean you're
practical at all--god forbid--
only persistent
as far as dying brothers & cold calls
are concerned--not violent,
not weak, but like a lantern afloat on a wave
open if necessary
to sinking your light
offshore. Onshore
I am as you would know
strongly sometimes
impatient & inside a swarm of loud thoughts
self-absorbed & locked-up.
If you were to die
who would remove me
from those thoughts?
When you lean your forehead
against mine
what you hear inside there
are all those
sounds likely, vibrations
like windowpanes rattled by headland squalls
or bullet trains
late forever & loaded down
with passengers green
as hoodie-wearing witches.
I lean my forehead against
your forehead
gently knowing both
will shortly vanish.
"First of all," says Virgil, "find
a protected place
for the bees
to make their
honey, a place that's
safe from the wind."


If you like this poem, David Rivard's books include Sugartown (Graywolf, 2006) and Bewitched Playground (Graywolf, 2000) among others.

Holding the Needle

So, what about that Supreme Court decision about how the death penalty is too extreme a punishment for the rape of a child? I have a hard time thinking about it separately from my stance on the death penalty, which I'm against. However, if there is any crime for which I'd like to see someone deprived of their life, it's for harming a child.

Yet, even as I wrote that last sentence, I cringed because I don't really want to witness anyone's violent death. That's why, at bottom, I'm against the death penalty. It's not so much the principle of the thing--that it's wrong for the state to kill somebody, though I do think that--but that for the state to do so sanitizes the process for the rest of us, thereby rendering killing a living person more bearable. When the state executes somebody, all the rest of us have become hired assassins and I'm not comfortable with that role.

I believe that taking someone's life necessarily changes the person involved. I don't know this from personal experience but I can't imagine it would be any other way. In war time soldiers are able to take what comfort they can from a sense of duty and patriotism that might help them rationalize the brutalities they're forced to commit and forced to witness, and even so the trauma lingers for many veterans after they've returned home. It's no accident that so many homeless people are veterans.

Those in the Corrections industry might also feel protected from guilt or trauma by their sense of justice, that the executed criminal "got what he deserved." I sympathize with that feeling, but it seems to me that there must be ramifications to the soul and spirit of the Corrections Officer who participates in the violent death of a prisoner. I imagine a sense of callousness developing, at the very least. I'm against the death penalty primarily because of what I think it must do to those involved in the practice, both those in Corrections and the rest of us who think we will benefit from the criminal's death: desensitize us to violence and desacralize life.

Surely, many people who support the death people feel that same sense of justice. Emotions of anger and vengeance are natural reactions to harm--and I would feel murderously angry if anyone hurt my child--and I could see how it might feel just to want to see harm come to the person who harmed me, my child, or some other loved one. I'm not sure, however, that the principle of an eye for an eye is the the most helpful standard to apply, however temporarily satisfying it might be.

Perhaps it's my Catholic upbringing but standards like, "Love thy neighbor as thyself," and "Thou shalt not kill," come readily to my mind. I don't think those principles have caveats, like, "Love thy neighbor except when he pisses you off, " or "Thou shalt not kill--unless they started it." Since killing people is generally regarded as criminal and morally wrong--and oddly part of the rationale for the death penalty--I think it's not something a society should therefore voluntarily collude in.

Rather than the death penalty, I think public mourning rituals should be held, where once a year everyone in cities and towns descend upon prisons and those who have lost someone to violent crime rend their garments and tear their hair and wail their grief--with the rest of us bearing witness and offering comfort--in the presence of the person who took that life.

We would read a litany of names of those who had passed and those who still mourn them, sing sacred songs, listen to sacred music, cry and hug and affirm that life is valuable, even for those who have sunk so low as to take another's life. I'm not saying they should be forgiven; I'm saying they should be forced to bear witness to how unbearable it is to lose someone you love to violence. I'm saying we should also bear witness and offer comfort to the violent losses the prisoners have sustained; I suspect they are many, of people, of pets, of hope, of joy, of trust.

While killing someone who killed someone else has a certain emotional symmetry, I don't think it helps in the long run to make us better people or a better society.

What would help is if together we all affirm that with the death of each person, something precious has been lost to all of us, which is why we will not, as a society, kill even those who have caused us such harm. Crimes against another person are also crimes against the rest of us, which is why the state prosecutes, rather than the family of the raped child taking the rapist out back and shooting him with a handgun. Taking a life is wrong, whether perpetrated by a man with a handgun or by the state with a lethal injection. Anytime that happens, we all should mourn.