Below I've quoted from a diary Cindy Sheehan wrote on Daily Kos. As you can imagine, I am a big Cindy supporter. I think she represents the heart of peace and has taken on the "smear merchants" and helped put a face to our collective pain regarding this administration.

While I won't go any deeper into politics than that on this blog, I will say that she really gets it. What is the IT she gets? "... his heart is connected to ours, his heart just forgot that." She gets that we are all connected. Once you begin to open your eyes to this and are not blinded to the "us vs. them" mentality that is so popular both here and in other countries, you can appreciate what she and so many others are trying to do.

Abu Salem and I talked about how we are all the same on the inside no matter what color, religion, language we speak, or what artificial border line we were accidentally born in. We all have the same hearts. Our hearts are all connected. When I reluctantly admitted to Abu Salem that even George Bush's heart was connected to ours, I thought he was going to crash the taxi. He yelled; "F**king, Bush. He has no heart he is a demon!" I softly replied to Abu Salem as I had my own epiphany: "No Abu Salem, his heart is connected to ours, his heart just forgot that."

No matter how much I struggle with this fact: George Bush is a human being, too. No matter how far he has strayed from his humanity and no matter how he seems to revel in the callous killing of innocent human beings and the destruction of a country that was no threat to ours, the same Universal Creator who created us, created him. The same Creator who created the babies in Palestine, Lebanon, Iraq, Afghanistan, and Israel, created George. The same Creator that made my darling, faithful, and sweet boy, Casey, created George!

This is the mission of Camp Casey this year: To remind George and the rest of his heart disconnected administration that their hearts are connected to ours and the innocent people of the world who their thoughtless greed are killing. It is also our mission to remind the people of the USA who still support the carnage that their hearts are connected to the babies and children that are wantonly being killed. I have realized from the start of Shocking and Awful that George was killing people who are connected to my heart. I realize that he is killing my brothers and sisters of the heart and that is not acceptable to me.

Like one of my most favorite writers, Anne Lamott, I struggle to send love and peace to someone I really dislike. An essay she wrote for her book "Plan B" was about how to love someone you truly despised. Sure, it was easy to follow God's words when the person in front of us was incredibly lovable. The true test came when that person was anything but.

Here's a bit of what she wrote in that essay courtesy of Salon.com:

I'm often sick about Bush, the war, joblessness and the deficit, but I was also soul-sick this summer to discover the secret gladness in me, gladness that everything has gone to hell for Bush. It was sickening, to feel relief when things went badly in Iraq, when joblessness didn't improve, and I hated this in me even as it alone gave me hope that someone else might end up in power next November. I felt addicted to the energy of hating Bush, Rumsfeld, Ashcroft. I thought that if we stopped hating them, it would mean that they had won.

So I sat there in church working this through in my mind, tugging at it, yet hunkered down on the inside to protect myself from having to take it in, and then the pastor said the most stunning thing I've ever heard her say: "When someone is acting butt -ugly, God loves them just the same as God loves the innocent. They are still just as loved by God." I was shocked. I thought, Boy, are you going to get it when Mom finds out. Also, I thought she was talking about the White House, but then she kept on preaching, about Jesus, and Dr. King, and -- if you read between the lines -- the people in my church. All of us -- and there are some exquisitely good people in this church. It was outrageous. She said you don't have to support people's political agenda, but you did have to love them, if you want to follow Jesus. She said you could tell if people were following Jesus, instead of following the people who follow Jesus, because they are feeding the poor, sharing their wealth, and making sure everyone has medical insurance. Then I zoned out.

Unfortunately, change is not my strong suit. Neither is forgiveness, or letting go. Everything I've ever let go of has claw marks on it. But the willingness to let go comes from the pain: and pain makes us willing to change, and effort to change changes you, and jiggles the spirit, gets to it somehow, to our deepest, hardest, most beautiful, ruined parts. And then Spirit expands, because that is its nature, and it drags along the body, and finally, the mind.

One of the things I pray for is that this administration opens their hearts and minds to see beyond their own gain. Yet, in my heart I know that we have this group of individuals heading up our government so that collectively, we will all learn some of the hard lessons. I don't know all of those lessons but coming to grips with the fact that we are all one is the place to start.

I heard the U2 song "One" today and this line fits this theme perfectly:

"We're one but we're not the same
We get to carry each other, carry each other ..."