What can I do about hatred?

Like many of us, I have been thinking since Saturday's horrific shootings in Arizona about the current culture of hateful rhetoric which sometimes becomes more than rhetoric and moves into action which results in horror and tragedy.  I find it so easy to stand outside of the tragedy and distance myself from the actions of a Loughner or a Seung-hui Cho (Virginia Tech) or any of the many tragedies that have been in the news over the past years.  Surely I could never do anything like that---could I?

As part of my journey toward being a peacemaker, trying to follow Jesus, I have had to recognize and accept that I have the same capacity for violence as any killer or bomber or abuser, and that my violence is only on a different part of the spectrum from what I am seeing in the news.  I may not get to the point where I make the headlines, but there are ways that I participate (or choose not to) in hateful speech.  I am on the road toward violence:

• When I listen to the negative, judging, MEAN inner voices that question my worth, I step toward using those same criteria on others;
• When I judge myself or others harshly, without compassion, I am adding to the culture of hate;
• When I refuse to admit that I might be wrong (SUCH a struggle at times), I am setting myself up as a little tin god, master of the universe, creator rather than created; 
• When I seek certainty (being right, even about God) instead of trusting, I am, again, outside my limits as a finite human being;
• When I push myself beyond reasonable limits so that I am constantly tired and irritable, I am refusing to accept my humanity, often in the name of ambition that is not really consistent with what have become my core values;
• When I violate my own boundaries or allow others to do so, I am acting out of the belief that who I am does not matter, setting myself up for resentment which can lead to small (or not so small) acts of violence against myself or others;
• When I refuse to forgive (which can sometimes take a long time, but the willingness is a start and often I even need to pray for that), I am forgetting how often I have needed and received forgiveness, putting huge amounts of energy into building walls that keep me separate, judging, hurting and ready to hurt.

I have learned all of these things about myself, and I am still a long way from being the person I believe God is creating me to be--and I have to seek forgiveness from God and others (and forgive myself) on a daily basis for that, too!  Making God my first priority, paying attention to where God is present throughout the day, seeking to let God be God, these and many other small disciplines (and more that God will show me as I am ready) are all pieces of the discipline I am learning as I seek to center my life in God, not me.  I want to be part of the culture of love, compassion, mutual bearing of burdens--the vision Jesus shared of the kingdom of God that is within us.  I believe that desire is, itself, one of the many graces of God and that God will use that to draw my heart toward peacemaking.