A Friday Allegory Running Through My Mind. Trying to Rationalize Righteousness and How People Know What They Know

A father comes home to see two of his children fighting. He's unsure what the scuffle is about, but he gets between them and tells them, "Knock it off." The kids separate and it looks to the father that peace has been restored. He tells two of his other kids, "Look out for these two. I have to run out to get gas, and I'll be right back."

But the two children go back at it and the other two children watch with frustration. The punches are heavy and the cursing is severe. At one point, the two children grow more violent, and the other two get very scared. Before they know it, however, a tragedy occurs and the one child kills the other. A life is lost.

When the father comes home he enters a scene that is rather gruesome. The one child says to him, "It got out of hand and I didn't mean it." He is shaken up real bad. The father says to the other two, "I told you to look after these two. What the heck happened?"

One of them tells a story that says the child who lost his life went too far. The other child, however, says that the child who did the killing was to be blamed.

The father is left to rationalize and make sense of what happened.

This is what I'm thinking about this morning, waking up and wondering how The Great Whatever makes sense of us human beings, especially when conflicts grow as severe as they have this last week - where the he said, she said, history said, morality said, duty said, hatred said, violence said, and peace said all arrive to a single event with multiple truths and perspectives. All the father has is the narrative he's being told, but he must make sense of the stories so he can go on with his life, albeit altered to a different course because of the incident.

And in town, they talk. On the news, they talk. Overseas, they talk. Everyone seems to know what happened and, without a doubt, they are assured they are correct. Yet, I wonder sometimes if we'll ever get it right. All we have left in Pandora's box, is hope.

"I love, to believe, in hope" ~ Brendan Kennelly