It has been a week since a young man entered a local Walmart and opened fire. El Paso is grieving. El Paso is angry. El Paso is struggling to answer the “Why?” question, not just psychologically but spiritually.

Racism, like war, has been with us always. From my perspective racism goes beyond skin color and reflects the attitude of hostility and persecution of anyone whom I consider “different”, whether that difference is due to skin color, sexual identity, disability, or the many other ways we are unique.

Yes, there has been much racist rhetoric of late. And yes it is unconscionable for a 19 year-old young man to be able to buy a semi-automatic weapon. But the problems go beyond politics and gun control. I remain convinced that, for there to be an end to any form of violence, I must first heal the violence and racism within my own heart and mind. I must be willing to confront within myself the ways in which I judge others not only as different than but as less than. Do I look down on the street corner beggar, the “unenlightened” person of another political party, the prostitute working his or her street corner, the red-haired child on the playground? If we are honest, we all can find some form of such racism within, motivating us to judge someone as “less than”. None of us are immune from such thinking although too many of us like to think we are above it. It is never easy to face that “enemy within”.

El Paso is my home and my home is hurting. But my immediate concern is that time will pass and so will the attention paid to this tragedy. And nothing will change. We do indeed need to find a way to hold our leaders accountable for inflammatory rhetoric. We do indeed need to acknowledge that little has been done after such tragedies so that guns are not so easy to obtain. That is my fear. A year from now people will gather outside Walmart and remember those who were murdered. But the lawmakers will have done little to ensure it won’t happen again.

I have little control over politicians. But I do have the power to face my own inner racism, to bring it to the light of day, and to heal it. In many ways, if more of us, whatever our ethnicity, sexual orientation, position in life, if we try to heal the violence and ugliness within, then perhaps, in a small but significant way, there won’t be another El Paso.