Too often, opinion is a lens polished by the grit of bias. And as I stare through my own lens, I might ask how much polish can the grit of bias actually create?

I can ill-afford to turn the fickle propensity of my attitude into the rock hard conviction of a fact. For if my attitude is given that much room to run, it will run from the very ‘fact’ that it purports to be.

It is my prayer that we would stop for a moment, turn off the voices that clamor for our allegiance, put aside the incessant rant of political agendas, and sit with ourselves for just a moment. And in the quiet of that moment, listen to your heart. For what you will hear is not all that far removed from the people that the ‘voices’ and ‘agendas’ claim to be your enemies.

Go do something great today. Something that's not pounded out from the podiums of prejudice, or politics, or rank biases stealthy clothed in righteous garments. Go do something great that's rooted in an essential good so deep that such podiums are helpless to capture even the thinnest parts of it. Go do something great today that's so clean and so authentic that the only podium that you find yourself listening to is the pain of the person standing next to you.

I think that we should be less focused on the crisis and more focused on what we can learn from the crisis. For the biggest crisis of all is the crisis of repeating the crisis.

Tragedy cleans the windows of the soul by washing away the bias of our lives in the detergent of pain.