* My friend, his son, and trying to find compassion.
A straight, older white man I know doesn’t like the world he sees. He speaks about “worrying for the future,” but he is talking about his own more than the world’s.
He doesn’t talk openly about his own mortality; he is, after all, a straight, older white man.
His power, his “empire,” his “days of the good ol’ boys network” are done.
Instead of speaking, as I might, about the impending loss, he has become resentful, turning his anxiety outwards onto the world he sees. He is scared of “foreigners”, “liberals,” “the media,” “gays,” “women,” “immigrants,” “them,” and just about everything that he is not.
My straight, older white friend is scared.
He fears that when he is gone, his sins will not be forgiven and his name will not be hallowed.
And, my friend’s son is angry. Mistakenly or not, this boy thought his father’s legacy could insulate him from the burden middle and lower class children face. And, shamefully, the child perpetrates in ways that his father (my friend) is worried that “African-American,” “Hispanics” and other youth do – but, in fact, do not.
I know that I ought to have compassion for both my friend and his son. The friend is the NRA and his son are the young white men that have been committing horrible atrocities recently.
With love,
Rabbi Brian
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