It’s not too late to save Brandon McInerney and it’s not too late to save ourselves. And they’re not mutually exclusive.
You see this is much bigger than being gay or coming out of the closet. This isn’t about the nature of the state of violence in our society. It’s not really about parenting or failures within the California school administration system either. This is about you and me.
Larry King’s murder affected us both. It shocked. It hurt. It turned our insides into roadkill. It made us ask how a child could do this? How a child could do something so unspeakable to another child?
But it happens everyday. All over the world. The corporate mass media won’t tell us this, but societally, we have created a world of child killers. Children who kill, and children who are being killed. They’re all colors and all religions.
We’re arming them younger and younger, taking their parents from them, and setting them off into the streets and jungles of life to do an adult’s job. This violent and murderous nature has stretched not only to today’s youthful generation, but back to the violent generation that raised them, and it will continue into the next generation to follow until the pattern is broken.
If you don’t believe me just look at the world that surrounds us. Does it really look like things are getting better? It can be a frightening sight if we open our eyes to it. And it can be incredibly beautiful when we open our hearts to it. Say what?
We can change it, that’s the point. We can begin to change our reality right now by taking control of our own lives, by bringing the peace and beauty and love and compassion that we’ve always sought right here into the living room of our Being.
The one inside our chest that connects me to you to Joe Blow and to Brandon McInerney. It’s called the heart. And the trick is to recognize the true interconnectedness of all things right now.
To slow it down for just a moment. To take a deep breath. To open our eyes, and to just be. Leave the judgments and labels and negative thought patterns aside and just get into whatever and whoever it is that surrounds us. And do this at all times, by doing it now. Look around. Breathe in the beauty of life. Put the thinker away and just be. It is all there, if we just open our eyes to it.
But to do this we must be willing to learn from our mistakes of the past, and to forget the rest. That story is history. The only history we want is what we make of it today. By not bringing the negative past memories that cloud our present minds. This moment is all we’ve got. Let’s make it count.
And forget about the future. It may never come. But if we sit still for a moment, and feel how amazingly beautiful this moment can be, we can do this forever. For writers, I call it “The Zone”. Eckhart Tolle calls it the state of Being. Shamans call it the place from where we came.
And we didn’t come from a place of violence and hatred and child murder, believe me. We came from this incredible place of pure, unadulterated freedom. That’s freedom of heart and mind and soul. The freedom that pure love renders onto all its sufferers. And when we find that “zone” of life, we don’t really care about wishing death or pain or hatred upon fourteen year olds and their families, regardless of what they’re accused of doing. We begin to wish the same for others that we would wish for ourselves. We wish for love and understanding. Respect and tolerance. But to get such high prizes of life, we must first learn to give them.
By giving our hearts to those who are less fortunate, the poverty dwellers of life in economics and consciousness, we are in fact also giving to ourselves. Because all that we give is reaped, not only by others, but by us. When we yield hatred and stench, we fill the footprints of our futures with the same. And worse. But when we wish nothing but love and compassion and forgiveness onto all at all times, we create a sunshine of Being that follows us wherever we go, for as long as we choose.
That’s why consciousness is so important to consider and to change. That’s why the hateful thought patterns that were reportedly generated by people like the parents of Brandon McInerney, which were then transferred to their son, must now be broken. Not broken by confining him to an adult prison for the rest of his life. But by retraining him. By reconditioning him with love and understanding and compassion.
By trying him in Juvenile Court, and then, if convicted, sentencing him to CYA. It would be there, at the California Youth Authority, that the hateful patterns of murderous intentions would be stricken from the record of Brandon’s life. And if we succeed in doing this, in changing Brandon’s heart of anger and hurt into one of love and joy, we’ve helped ourselves. The collective consciousness of humanity transforms a little closer to the utopia of peaceful love and Garden of Eden joy that we all so much deserve. That mirrors the place in our hearts from where we came.
For more on Brandon McInerney please read related articles:
- In Brandon McInerney’s Defense, a Defense Fund
- Brandon McInerney’s Legal Court Brief for July 24, 2008
- Let’s Not Destroy Brandon McInerney
- Another child is dead: So, how should we respond?
[...] Stolen Boy’s Weblog by Michael Mehas Skip to content « Discussing Jesse James Hollywood (6) Let’s Save Ourselves By Saving Brandon McInerney » [...]
[...] more on Brandon McInerney please read related articles: – Let’s Save Ourselves By Saving Brandon McInerney; – Brandon McInerney’s Legal Court Brief for July 24, 2008; – Another child is dead: So, how [...]
Brandon’s defense fund website can be found at http://www.brandonsdefense.com
[...] more on Brandon McInerney please read related articles: – Brandon McInerney is Worth Saving; – Brandon McInerney’s Legal Court Brief for July 24, 2008; – Let’s Not Destroy [...]
[...] Stolen Boy’s Weblog by Michael Mehas Skip to content « Brandon McInerney is Worth Saving [...]
[...] more on Brandon McInerney please read related articles: – Brandon McInerney is Worth Saving – Brandon McInerney’s Legal Court Brief for July 24, 2008 – Let’s Not Destroy Brandon McInerney [...]
My question is: Who is to blame here? The kid goes down because the parent(s) failed in their responsibilities as parents to the boy. There should be more disclosed before a judgment can be made in this case.
[...] more on Brandon McInerney please read related articles: – Brandon McInerney, Our Sacrificial Lamb – Brandon McInerney is Worth Saving – Brandon McInerney’s Legal Court Brief for July 24, 2008 – Let’s Not Destroy Brandon McInerney [...]
Imagine someone killing your child, or any child you care for, or any child you are conscious of for that matter. Then imagine being told ‘take a step back, take a deep breath, and just BE.’ Imagine your reaction. Extremely insulted is only beginning of how you would feel.
Murder should not beget murder; I agree with your opposition to capital punishment. But for Brandon to spend only ten-years in a juvenile facility would be a great insult to justice. In fact, it would only bolster the snowballing violence amongst our youth, which you denounce. ‘Kill a kid, get outta juvie when I’m 25: no big deal.’
Adult responsibility is appropriately questioned in this post. Well, now it is our time as adults to be responsible. Now is our time to impose the appropriate consequences for the heinous act of one of our children.
No matter Brandon’s strengths as a young man, and I don’t doubt that they exist, his severe actions warrant severe consequences. If he is released from any kind of state custody or incarceration in less than 25 years, a great disservice will have been done, a great disservice to Brandon in particular.
The murder of the 14 year old boy in unjustifiable. But similar tragic events have happened since time immemorial. Schools share some of the blame for lack of educational programs directed at the issue. But programs advocated by the GBLT deny natural realities and exacerbates the situation. Assaults of lesbians by female straights resulting from sexual advances are rare. Female straights view advances by lesbians as either amusing or flattering and conflict in this area is minimal. Gay-‘straight male’ contact is something quite different.
Throughout the animal kingdom aggression and competition defines male sexual behavior. It is a deadly serious area of natural behavior. The sexual identity of heterosexual males is ultimately the most important aspect of their existence. The threatening or compromising of this identity is the single and only cause of violence against lesbians and gays by male heterosexuals.
.
The very nature of the gay lifestyle dictates gays will always remain a minority and educational programs should be structured from this viewpoint. The program should not target heterosexuals but gay survival in a straight world. If Brandon would have hit Larry a good non fatal lick up beside the head with a baseball bat this case would have immeasurable educational value. It would serve exemplary to gay males the seriousness of approaching potential lovers. Teen lesbians would benefit in learning the consequences of intruding on straight relationships without the physical trauma of experience; the potential of having their teeth shoved down their throats or their female arms being broken like twigs by enraging the awesome physical power of the human heterosexual male who, by natural design, will always dominate the species.
I can see in some instances where death should not be a punishment for causing death. These are called accidents. Courts prove whether something is an accident or not and if it’s not the person who committed the “crime” should be given the proper punishment regardless of age. At 12 and probably even earlier, I knew it was against the law to kill someone and hence I wouldn’t do it. I was beaten by my father black and blue and could be considered an angry kid because I got into fights all the time. Saying children are always a product of their environments and they should be treated more leniently is crap. This 14 year old kid committed premeditated murder and should be tried to the fullest. If that means he should burn… so be it. The world is crowded as it is and is full of more idiots just like him who make terrible choices and have to pay for it.
The way i see it: You do the big boy crime you gotta do the big boy time. So let him rot in jail. Dont donate to this pathetic losers defense fund. I dont know about the rest of you but at 15 i remember i knew right from wrong and i knew what the consequences for my actions would be. HE deserves no sympathy from anyone. BURN IN HELL Brandon McInerney!