For what is a man profited, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul? (Matthew 16:26)

There is nothing more urgent than the preservation of your own soul—not from the fires of hell but from destructive forces here and now. There are powers at large today seeking to rip love from your heart and replace it with fear and hate. In the name of all that is beautiful and holy, you must not allow it.

The powers of destruction are using your politics to get to you. They don’t care about your opinions; your opinions are tools the powers will use to corrupt you. Do you feel that will to dominate, defeat, demean that other, with whom you disagree? The degree to which you feel that is the degree to which the agents of destruction have gained power over your soul. You should be alarmed.

How you play is what you win. (Ursula Le Guin)

If you win through violence, what you have won is violence. What is won by violence must be kept through violence. However noble your intentions, the territory you win through violence will be ruined, dead, sown with salt.

This is a plea for you to resist, not politicians (the poor fools), but the demons running freely through a population, jerking people around like marionettes.

What if the way we respond to the crisis is part of the crisis? (Bayo Akomolafe)

You’re playing a game rigged by the powers of destruction; you can’t win. They have captured your mind and they’re dosing it with fear and anger. The angrier you get, the more you play the domination game, the more you buy into the myth of separation—the more lost you are.

Listen to that still, small voice that you can only detect when you’ve quieted yourself. That voice will call you to nobler, humbler action. That is the voice the powers of destruction need you to ignore. You will feel the echoes of that voice when you look into that formerly hated other’s eyes with compassion. How they react when you attempt that connection is not your business. The only soul you can save is your own.