By far the most popular of the humiliating nicknames I endured in junior high (Susan of Arc, Susan of Troy, etc.) was "Crusader Rabbit;" in honor of the TV cartoon character of the same name whose efforts to save the day from his nemesis Dudley Nightshade in constant reruns enthralled my brother Michael and I  when we were little. Like Crusader Rabbit, I seemed to have come in with a keen eye for folly and an insatiable appetite for justice that belied mild-mannered first impressions.

I spent my childhood taking on neighborhood bullies and rescuing injured birds and animals.  In fifth grade I organized our class to remotely "adopt" a Korean child. By junior high, I attempted to launch Civil Rights and Vietnam War protests within a community then referred to as Nixon's "Silent Majority" for reasons that defied logic given the frequency and volume of their opinions. Although I theoretically had access to persuasion through my role as student council president and newspaper editor I had yet to learn that no amount of cajoling, educating, or bargaining could necessarily convince someone to change his mind. And I did not yet understand that morality in this world exists only in the eye of the beholder.

I spent another two decades seeking and never really finding justice in one way or another--through political activism, volunteering, and the written word--an exhausting and ultimately isolating experience. I couldn't figure out why people of my generation-even some of my friends--did not share the same perception of the world's troubles let alone solutions I did. More importantly, I didn't comprehend why nothing I worked for ever seemed to make a lasting difference, or why even when participating in groups in which members shared a common mission conflict and divisiveness reigned.  It wasn't until I found A Course in Miracles 7 years ago that I began to realize I had been looking for justice where it can never be found, but with a little willingness to admit it wasn't working could begin to seek and find a better way.

And yet, here I am again this morning bemoaning injustice; contemplating, for instance, the many ways in which lives appear to be randomly plucked from this world for no apparent reason. And wondering again how to answer the question of why when it comes to the subject of physical and emotional suffering. Culminating in death as it inevitably does for every embodied one of us who first get to witness its seeming brutality in those we love and finally confront for ourselves.

I suppose I found myself once more seduced into believing the ego's world could offer any sane answers based, as it is, on the insane idea of fragmenting invulnerable, perfect wholeness. The "tiny mad idea" A Course in Miracles tells us the one child of God took seriously at the very beginning thereby seemingly fracturing invulnerable oneness and propelling itself into an entire hallucinated universe of forms competing for their very survival. Programmed to sooner or later self-destruct to prove they existed at God's expense in the first place but completely unconscious of that original belief. I mean, really?

And yet, in grappling with the sudden death of a healthy, young person close to someone I love this past week, struggling to console the seemingly inconsolable; I discovered....

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Research and Development Technologist