Dear brothers and sisters,

There is a lot of pain on this planet. Radicals on all ends of the spectrum are attacking one another. And those of us caught in the crossfire watch flabbergasted and helplessly. But we are not helpless. We may feel fragile at the moment, but we are not helpless. Oh, it's a cruel collective when people are no longer safe in sacred houses of worship. It's downright cruel, appalling, heartbreaking and tragic. When holy sites are no longer havens or places of refuge, what of the world?

Instead of coming together as human beings and finding ways to protect ourselves from natural disasters and disease, we attack and kill each other, create wars, divide ourselves into belief systems, draw borders and tell each other lies about who among us is superior.

Oh, brothers and sisters! We must stop taking sides. We must stop feeling threatened by the other. This is the game of our collective ego, prodding us to hate, to attack, to condemn, to ostracize, to take revenge and to go to war so the best can win. But there is no best religion, best skin color, best race or best gender. But we are falling for it, believing this lie of us vs them. And lives are at risk. And we are perpetuating that danger when we use labels, pointing fingers to show where the hate is coming from and seeing the violence coming from "them", trying to prove that the threat is coming from "others".

There are no others, oh sisters and brothers. We have been taught to fear immigrants, refugees, those who call God by another name and those who don't adhere to any belief system. We have been taught to believe that women are inferior, gays are unnatural, and that social and financial divides are the way of the world. And these doctrines may seem normal since we grew up with them, but they are manifesting as hatred, poisoning our collective unconsciousness, tainting the heart of our existence and shredding our unified thread into pieces so that all we see are sects and enemies.

So we have no right to act surprised when violence occurs - when we refuse to remember that there is only one race: The human race. We have no right to act surprised when we believe that darkness is elsewhere and not lurking within us, in our nations, our communities, our societies and our thought matrices. It's always the other's fault, right? We have created this mess by believing we are entitled, by believing there are enemies outside of us and by believing that LOVE is wrong.

Oh, brothers and sisters, LOVE is never wrong. Neither is it right. Because LOVE merely is. And when we bask in it, we will no longer see a you or a me. No rightwing, leftwing, conservative, liberal, local, expat, man, woman, gay or straight. Only a human being. A divine spark that is made of love, that longs to love, to be loved. Let us not forget. Let us not take sides. Let us not retaliate. Let us only hold hands as we navigate unknown terrain. Let us hold each other so strongly that borders dissolve, and we travel freely like clouds, roaming from one place to another, welcome wherever we go, showering blessings on Earth.

By Nejoud Al-Yagout

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