Here at the farm, I sat in the garden and, in silence, held the new London victims in the light and thought of them.

Then, I saw some of the hatred and fear expressed afterwards by so many people eager to exploit their suffering and loss and spread as much rage and panic as possible. I’m thinking especially of our President, who disgraced our wonderful country and spoke to the worst in us at a time when our leaders desperately need to call out our best.

I’m not sure which saddened or sickened me more, but I suppose that awful honor must go to the dead and injured. I see us as a land of liberty, not bigotry.

I choose not to be a bigot. Everyone else must make up their own minds about what they choose to be, and everyone else must take responsibility for how they respond. I am happy with what I see in my mirror..

Bigot, like sexist or left and right, is one of those words tossed around quite a bit, often without context or meaning. I looked it up in several places, but the Mirriam-Webster definition was the simplest and most unequivocal:

“Big-ot-ry:” noun. “Intolerance towards those who hold different options from oneself.”

Bigot – A person who is obstinately or intolerantly devoted to his or her own opinions and prejudices; especially: one who regards or treats the members of a group (such as a racial or ethnic group) with hatred and intolerance.” Perhaps there is such a thing now as “fake” definitions, but I think this one is clear and true.

I have no miraculous words to share to tell other people how to feel in the face of such awful, relentless, divisive and disturbing news, day after day, week after week, month after month. We all have to cope with this new and ugly reality in our own way, we all have to find our own ways of staying ground and whole within ourselves.

These are good and loving people, they have not come her to do us harm but to live meaningful lives in freedom and safety and to join our great experiment, we invented the idea of a popular democracy.

One of my ways is to re-commit myself to the cause of the refugees and immigrants I have been meeting with and getting to know these past few months. After all of this hatred and rage, the Pompanuck retreat for the refugee and immigrant soccer team from RISSE – the refugee and immigrant support group based in Albany, N.Y.

The Army Of Good has sent more than $1,000 for these 16 kids and four adults to spent most of three days at this beautiful retreat and farming center in several weeks, learning, hiking, resting, playing, drawing and being secure.

Tomorrow, I am sending $900 donated dollars to RISSE to buy a new projector and screen for their classes on English, citizenship and handling money. Tuesday, I am buying spanking new uniforms for the RISSE soccer team. Next month, we are taking the soccer team to the Great Escape and Adventure Park for a day fun and community.

That is my personal answer to terror and tragedy.

All of the necessary funds have been gathered, and thank you. If you wish to contribute to RISSE directly,  you can do so here. They do heroic work on behalf of our newest and sometimes neediest citizens.

“The America we see right now,” one of the RISSE teachers told me,”this is not the real America. The real America is still out there. That’s what I tell the children.” So we are.

Every minute, the generosity seems more wonderful and necessary.  It was about a year ago, during a similar  hate and terror storm that people who thought themselves, I am sure, burned down the RISSE office and support center and slashed the tires on all of their vans.

As I come to know these children and their parents, I have come to love and respect them. They have suffered unimaginable horrors and now have to endure the bigots and the small-minded who insist they are dangerous, who have stranded many of their loved ones in great danger, and who have made them feel unwelcome and often frightened in the land of the free and the brave. The people who burned their building down and now rail at them because they are different are neither free or brave, they are slaves of their own, just as the terrorists in London are slaves.

So I will re-dedicate myself to this work, and speak out for compassion and love and empathy. I will do everything within my power to show the real nature of our wonderful and generous country to these good people, who have endured unimaginable horrors in their determination to come to our country.

Setting fire to their building is not what the real America is about. Neither is bigotry. We are a brave and generous people and I will celebrate liberty, not fear or hatred.