Compassion for a Killer
I rented the DVD "Monster" where Charlize Theron plays a female serial killer. Her performance affected me for days afterward; I can't imagine what depths it plumbed in her. To have the lack of ego to empathically flow into the heart of a person so wounded and desperate that the line between murder and self-preservation melts away—Wow! I wonder if Charlize knows how a courageous performance like this one can stir such profound issues in ordinary women like me. She became that serial killer, and I became that serial killer. At some level we are all that serial killer, and we are all the wounded, abused women, and we are all the abusers. But for the grace of God that frees us from self-sacrifice and suffering, and the gauzelike veil that makes our individual lives seem separate, any one of us might have walked that path. It is less and less easy for me to judge anyone else because I keep flipping into the space behind their eyes.