In Catholic school the nuns used to tell us that we should love everyone as we loved Jesus. We didn't have to like them but we had to love them. I used to argue this and my trump card was always Hitler. How could I love him and, by the way, why would I want to be a part of any religion which said I had to?

Time happened and I fell for Zen Buddhism. So much of it made sense to me except ---there it was again. I had to love everyone - even Hitler. This time I got it in my head. After all we were all the same consciousness so to hate someone else was to hate myself. But my heart never signed off on it.

For one thing there was still no explanation as to why such evil and suffering had to exist in the world. What was Reality's Purpose in inflicting Hitler on the rest of us?

Then one day I was listening to Dr. Wayne Dyer. He's one of my favorite speakers. He has a way of revealing things which I've always known but wasn't aware of knowing. He was speaking about the Power of Intention. Specifically he was speaking about love and kindness. How studies have shown that a bystander simply viewing an act of kindness will experience a rise in their seratonin level. He told a story about a guy whose son was developmentally disabled and isolated from other children but who wanted desperately to be accepted. One day the father and his son, Shaya, were walking past a neighborhood baseball game and Shaya ran up and asked if he could play. His father's heart sank. He knew the kids wouldn't allow such a gawky, uncoordinated kid to play with them. To his amazement one side let him play. Although he could barely hold the bat they put him in when they were three runs down, bases loaded, bottom of the ninth. The other side quickly caught on and the pitcher stepped in a few steps and lobbed a gentle ball to Shaya. He managed to hit it a few feet and he began running to first base. He could have been caught out within seconds but now both teams were cooperating in helping him win. They wanted him to be the hero and win the game for his team - knowing he might never have such an opportunity again. So the pitcher and the outfielders threw the ball clumsily back and forth while Shaya trotted from base to base and finally home.

In that moment, his father says, every one of those 18 children on both teams realized God's (or Spirit or Universal Consciousness if you prefer) perfection.

His father came to believe that when God brings a child like this into the world the perfection that he/she seeks is in the way people react to the child.

If everyone is part of God's perfection then everyone has a divine Purpose. And perhaps that divine Purpose is to give others of us the opportunity to treat them with compassionate action, kindness and love.

Perhaps, said Dyer, there is a cosmic sign-up sheet where Consciousness signs up to live a troubled or painful, or even evil mortal life to present to us all the opportunity to respond with the best parts of ourselves.

This made more sense to me. I saw that each person when confronted with Hitler's gradual military build-up and grab for power all the way from Kristallnacht, through Theriesenstadt and ultimately ending in the Holocaust had a choice to walk away or stand firm against him. Indeed, there were thousands of resistance fighters and ordinary people who aided and hid Jews in their homes for years at risk of their lives. They had the choice of realizing God's perfection or not.

I was thinking about this recently as I was watching the horrible images from the Tsunami - now considered the worst natural disaster in modern history. I read the story of the father who struggled to hold on to his three year old only to have the child ripped from his grasp and watch his terrified little face disappear under a wall of water; the 15 year old who lost every member of his family and was standing on a street corner begging for food. What was the Purpose in this devastating tragedy? I realized, then, what an amazing opportunity had been given to us to realize God's perfection in our compassionate and loving response to the victims - living and dead. I honor them for going through such agony in this lifetime and I'm grateful for the opportunity to be able to respond in a way which expresses my Purpose.