How can God let this happen?

"How can God let this happen?"
There are things in this world that are very hard to sit with.

This morning i wake up, knowing a teenage girl who just moved out of her house because she called the police after 12 years of sexual abuse by her stepfather. She is staying with her relatives now. He is in jail. Jail is not kind to these kinds of offenders.

It is sad for the whole family. Her stepfather is the blood father of her younger siblings. The ties of blood and loyalty, guilt and shame are a complicated family web.

It triggers my own pain.

I breath, stretch, move. i sit in this moment in it's raw nakedness, there is nothing to dress up. my mind wants to make stories. on one hand, my mind can compress and drown in the story of sadness. but that doesn't feel entirely true. on the other hand, my mind can expand and see that they all live beyond this moment, their spirits are so much bigger and eternal than this moment. but that doesn't feel entirely true either. both perspectives are true. i try to keep dropping the thoughts and sit with the feeling.

"How can God let this happen?"

In spiritual work, this is one of the central questions everyone is circling.
Hitler.
Genocide.
Murder.
Sexual Abuse.
Abuse of children.

What can we do with that?
How do we heal our pain?
How do we look at God?

Whether you think of God as an actual being, or as a collective of all our consciousness creating our existence...why are these things happening?

if you want to understand human nature, look inside yourself. all the seeds are there. the conflicts are there.

"There is nothing that exists outside that does not exist inside, and nothing that exists inside that does not exist outside." -tantric saying

"Make the outer as the inner and the inner as the outer" -Jesus, Gospel of Thomas

with all it's contradictions and complications, I still love this life.

Everything is suffering. yes, that is true. i picked up a buddhist book the first time many years ago, and read that as noble truth. if we can stop fighting that simple truth, we can find some peace in the acceptance.

Because of the dual nature of this world, pleasure and pain, many spiritual seekers are looking for a way out. heaven or not being re-incarnated again, achieving liberation from this dual world.

but we love this world too. my friends mom is battling cancer. she was sitting in her hospital bed and she told her daughter, "i haven't watched enough sunsets. i haven't eaten enough ice cream".

everything is suffering, and everthing is in bliss too.

after crying about the sadness of this situation last night, i found myself laughing over some silly jokes.

it as if i expect that a shadow this big would blot out any enjoyment.

but even through great pain, life is joyful and unexpectedly funny.