Images

There were a few memorable moments in the news seared into my brain this week. One was President Bush, leader of the free world, line-dancing with brightly garbed African women. Reminded me of Gene Kelley & Donald O'Conner in "Singin' in the Rain" re-telling their bufoonish beginnings--"Dignity, always dignity."

On a more serious note, the LA Times covered the street memorial of one Daniel Leon, shot by police after gunning down Marcos Salas as he walked his two-year-old granddaughter down the street. To paraphrase an old adage, he that lives by the assault rifle, shall die by the assault rifle.

The Times featured two pictures of Daniel's brother, Jesus Leon, obviously depressed and sad. Wearing a black hoodie and comforting a young woman, he wasn't clearly the"scum" labeled by some comments in the Homicide Report. On the other hand, as a member of the infamous Leon family, one of thirteen children currently born into a fifty year tradition of the Mexican Mafia, it's all too probable that Jesus will be following in his brother's footsteps.

The question arises in my mind: is there any hope for these people caught up in the gang mentality? If the police and social workers couldn't turn the tide in fifty years, will there ever been an end to the cycle of drug dealing and violence?

Comments on the web suggest bull dozing the cluster of cheap apartments and barred stucco homes and replacing them with pricey condos. That would certainly drive them out, but to where? Wouldn't they take their habits and hatreds to new neighborhoods?

I keep thinking about Jesus Leon. Is it possible that he could break out of the gang mentality? What if just a few of these young men made a suddenly leap of awareness to a higher level? And where could that begin except at a spiritual level? To a large extent everyone lives within a world of their own creation.

I was reading "A Course in Miracles" this morning and was struck by these words: Unshaken does the Holy Spirit look on what you see; on sin and pain and death, on grief and separation and on loss. Yet does He know one thing must still be true; God is still love, and this is not His Will.

I have hope for Jesus Leon, hope that he can find a new path, a higher purpose, a break from the past to a new awakening. With God all things are still possible. I'll be praying for him. Won't you join me?

So be it,

Mother T