Auschwitz

One of several powerful Holocaust memorials in Paris. Every one of them leaves me speechless. I don't know what to say except: Remember. Remember, remember, remember. Rembember that Hitler is only a mask to hide the sins of a nation. Remember all religions, at their core, embrace tolerance and compassion. And remember that history is not the dusty pages of a book, but a letter to future generations from those who have gone before. It gives me the willies to hear politicians wax eloquent about "manifest destiny," the American code word for the extermination and subjegation of Native Americans. It hurts my soul to know that every African slave who suffered under our "peculiar institution" had also been betrayed by a brother back home and traded for material gain. And it makes me sick to my stomach to know that human trafficking continues today around the world, including the United States. We make evil distant and give it a foreign accent, because the truth -- that we all share responsibility -- is not something we want to believe about ourselves. It's the Germans who were bad, not the well-groomed women at the Orlando Country Club who didn't want to let the women from the Jewish Community Center use their locker rooms in the 1980s; or the men of the University Club, who didn't accept blacks until the 1990s, and then begrudgingly. It's the free-loading 40 percent of the country, living below the poverty line, who won't pay taxes; not the top twenty percent who hold 97 percent of the wealth.  Poverty. Immigration. Sexual Orientation. Religion. Pick your poison. Now look in the mirror. That's the lesson of Auschwitz.

The good stuff:

1. Love
2. Joy
3. Peace
4. Patience
5. Kindness
6. Goodness
7. Faithfulness
8. Gentleness
9. Self-control