To a law officer I have been blessed to know for years; concerning the possibility of police brutality and violence in America today: Our conversation......

To a law officer I have been blessed to know for years; concerning the possibility of police brutality and violence in America today:

Our conversation yesterday got me thinking. And it helped me understand something about myself, maybe for the first time.

I have known about myself that I am a fiercely loyal individual. I'll pay a personal price that most people can't imagine to fulfill my duties within a group with which I am affiliated, and/or responsible to.

But I have never been able to stop there. My ultimate loyalty is never to the group, or even individual, with which I am affiliated or to whom I am responsible. My ultimate loyalty has always been, will always be, to the whole, all of humanity, all of creation. This is not something I sought out. I think I got it from my father. Wherever I got it it has always been part of me.

It has always made me an outsider. And has always made me distrusted, and alien to others.

It is a quality about myself that I deeply value. I think it is what others might call ultimate loyalty to God.  I see it as a central quality in those throughout history I revere, Jesus, Martin Luther King jr., Gandhi....

I find this lacking in almost all of my sisters and brothers.

I refused to become a licensed psychologist because I came to see that psychologists are ultimately loyal to themselves, to the group, and not to their clients.

I think this is a central failing in what calls itself the church.

I don't see an institution today, maybe with the exception of Nursing, that isn't plagued by this.

But few places is it as dangerous as in and among men and women in uniform who carry weapons of death. And with few exceptions I see their ultimate loyalty to their group, not to those who they have a duty to serve.