By Anna Von Reitz
1. You can't fix evil. That's why fraud has no statute of limitation. We have a natural impulse to try to fix things and we are pretty good at it. We fix broken furniture and automobiles and computer networks and all sorts of other things, but we can't fix evil and we can't fix other people.
We can learn to recognize evil and we can find the strength to kick it out of ourselves and out of our lives, but even then, we aren't changing evil. We are changing our relationship with it.
Sometimes, quite rarely, but regularly enough, a judge has to look into the eyes of evil and condemn it; this isn't as easy as it might seem. We didn't create the man, and we didn't create the evil in him. There's always a voice that asks, who am I to pull the lever or give the nod?
Always it comes down to this: we can't change evil, but everyone has a choice and from youth it is always set before us. It's not the man we ultimately condemn; it's the evil that he allows to live in him.
2. Justice doesn't come from policies, processes and procedures.
Justice comes from men and women who have justice in their hearts. False justice always relies on words and outward statutes, loopholes and wrangles over terms of art, and phantom concepts like "judicial discretion". True justice comes from the heart.
That said, a heart can be a tricky thing, arrogant and hard, or soft as butter. We aspire to these standards that we call "Law", but always, it's our own internal struggle that comes to the fore, and always a good judge or juror has to fight hard for the middle ground. To say that any of us are without prejudice of one kind or another, is to lie, for in some part, we are all ignorant and ignorance gives birth to prejudice by the hour.
If it seems that a judge or justice lacks humility, be sure this isn't so, if their sanity is preserved; for every day they see themselves mirrored in the faces of those who come before them, and every day they must assert themselves to be worthy to judge on no more basis than this -- that the duty fell to them.
3. Religion is not a replacement for spirituality. Religion is the shell that is left after the spirit has gone. Like many other things I say, this may seem like a stupid commonplace once it's said and comprehended, but until someone speaks up and captures it in words, such knowing may be like hope, that elusive thing that Emily Dickenson first observed has feathers.
Man needs God, and the strange thing is, God needs Man; created and Creator are bound together, and never truly separated. It is thus in life and death that the Mortals are remembered by the Immortal, as a Father remembers his Son, and his Son remembers his Father. We needn't fret and wonder if anyone will remember us; from age to age the same, we are remembered. And we are loved. Individually. Cherished. And needing only a word and breath to give us form.
The part of any true religion is to remind us of our glory and to remind us we are loved, in whatever degraded, diseased, and miserable form that we endure; in our youth and in our old age the same; and what if a religion is only meant to shelter us like a house that we inherited? Like the ancient shell of a life long passed away, yet still protecting us from the ravages of sunlight and rain?
Then, let it be and be at peace. There is no contest among us. There is only one Creation, and we are part of it.
4. Love is a decision we make every day. It doesn't come in a blaze of blinding light. Not like the movies for most of us. Rather, love sneaks up on us, arranged or not, and with its solemn and silly moments ensnares our hearts and traps our memories, weaving a tapestry we could never expect and will always remember.
Don't take it for granted. Not a single hour. When he looks at you and says, "I love you...." and you know it's true, when she snuggles a warm blanket around you while you sleep, when your children run before you, then know that you've been blessed. Be grateful for that.
Just stop and take a mental picture of yourself in this moment, while your husband is sitting beside you, or while your wife is singing a song in the kitchen, and your dog is asleep at your feet. Simple things. Common things. Remember this. This is what love is made of, and what life is made of, too.
Love is a quiet hero, not boastful or centered on itself. It always asks what it can give, not what it can get. It endures through the dark hours of a fading elder or fretful baby, and is still there in the morning. Love marches out the door to face the world; love comes home again. And if at times your story seems old and frayed, know that it can always live again, more beautiful than ever, even in your final hours, when age and use have left only a shadow of what you once were together. Even then.
As we live and as we love the indelible passages are written, and it all begins and ends with a simple decision to love, a decision that we make every day, and if we are lucky, will last forever.
5. Youth, like age, has a wisdom of its own. Never forget that, nor gainsay it. We, the Elders, have walked the path of life and learned from it, but in ways we are still as giddy and silly as any spring heifer. We still blush and struggle. We can still topple over, butt over tin cups, dignity forgotten, glasses awry, knee scraped, looking up at the blue and open sky. Yes, youth has its wisdom, that we remember, more gently with time.
At eighty or eight months, we can look at the world and find it brand new, surprising and beautiful and strange by turns, a kaleidoscope of sensory data, learned or unlearned. A loving hand on the shoulder still means the same thing.
A hug remains the universal currency. And you are all rich beyond measure.
Granna
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