"We are human beings!"

Every day my eyes are opened, my heart breaks a little more.

Yesterday was a difficult day for me, which I honestly feel kind of selfish about saying given the reason for my pain.

In my Feminist and Liberation Theology lecture, we watched the Warner Bros film "Romaro" -- a movie depicting the archbishop's role in the preliminary violence leading up to the decade long massacre of a civil war in El Salvador.

The movie was incredibly graphic, necessarily so, but what really shocked me was the complete disrespect that both sides had for each other. These people were separated by their differences -- differences in beliefs, income, ethnicity -- and they used these differences as reasons to kidnap, mutilate, and kill each other. Granted, the political and socioeconomic issues underlying this war are much more complicated than what I have just laid out, but the concept of violence as a means to getting what we want absolutely disgusts me.

And it's everywhere.

We are constantly in the middle of a violent, treacherous world, and sometimes it's more than I can take. It makes me so angry to think that because a Christian doesn't believe a Muslim should be inhabiting his/her homeland, they would shoot this person based on a difference of beliefs. Or that a woman will be abused and raped by her husband, her uncle, her father, her brother, and strangers simply because she is biologically female. Or that an African American man in America is 10x more likely to be incarcerated than a white man.

The list goes on and on... the injustices of this world go on and on. Every day, there are extreme injustices because we are so doggedly determined to focus on DIFFERENCES. One of the most powerful lines said by Romaro in the film bearing his name is screamed when Romaro is locked in a prison cell adjacent to the cell of a fellow priest who is being tortured: "WE ARE HUMAN BEINGS!"

WHY can't we ALL EMBRACE THIS???? REGARDLESS of beliefs, skin color, gender, sexual orientation, or class, WE ARE ALL HUMAN BEINGS, and simply BEING ALIVE gives each life INTRINSIC VALUE. What right have we to take someone's life from them on the basis of elevating our own status and deprecating theirs. It's disgusting. And the sooner we stop separating the "sheep from the goats", the sooner our world will find peace. NO ONE IS BETTER THAN ANYONE ELSE. We all have the same beating hearts, the same blood flow, the same ability to inhale and exhale, to feel, to love. It's what makes us human, and it is that HUMANITY that is worth defending, not some ticket to another universe or creation of an elite class.

Until we can realize that it is our HUMANITY that binds us together, we will continue to be content with being kept apart, and we will continue to perpetuate whatever violent, unjust means it takes to keep us separate. There is no equality in separation. We NEED to stop thinking of humanity in terms of "us" and "them". There IS no "us" and "them". There is ONLY "us". All of us.

We are human beings. It's time we started acting like it.

May peace be restored to Egypt on this day of protests with as little bloodshed as possible. Our prayers are with you.