Calm

My calm is in danger.

I was making my way to the convention center, standing at a crosswalk waiting for the light to turn. I made the mistake of responding to a woman (under this really grody picture of a dismembered baby) who was trying to push information on me. I should have just ignored her. Instead, I tried to connect as a human being. “Who are you? Why are you here?”

I should have bailed when the light turned. Instead, I stayed. We talked for perhaps 5 minutes. I tried all my usual tacks – we’re all in this together, human beings have a lot in common, we all want happiness and don’t want to suffer. She kept just pushing back on the “2000 abortionists in that building behind me.” “50 million prospective clients killed, don’t they even want their money?” I cautioned her that both my father and my wife have given their lives to providing medical services and healing … that my sister is on the same road … and that she should choose her words very carefully so as not to insult my entire family.

I should have left. We weren’t communicating … we were arguing an issue of faith … which never leads to happiness.

Finally I asked the key question, for me: Is she threatening anyone? Does she think that she has the moral authority to kill doctors? That’s the thing that worries me: People taking the law into their own hands and violently intimidating the health care providers. She said something like “oh goodness, I wouldn’t kill anyone myself, but if I heard that someone had killed an abortionist, I would probably have a party.”

I spat on her feet and I left.

That was the wrong thing to do. I regret it. I should have been calm and simply walked away. I haven’t been that enraged in years. Enraged and, on reflection, scared. These people are willing to kill. She said so herself.