A Stabbing
This quote feels often elusive yet so true,
“We’re all like localized vibrations of the infinite goodness of God’s presence. So love is our very nature. Love is our first, middle, and last name. Love is all; not [love as] sentimentality, but love that is self-forgetful and free of self-interest.
— Thomas Keating
Dec. 21, 2024
Nesti was inside her tent watching a movie but could hear everything that was happening outside the tent. She heard yelling and arguing that was coming from a nearby tent.
Xander, one of her tent mates, was arguing with another camper about the smell of smoke coming from his tent. He was telling him that everyone smelled it and his concern was that if a fire started all the tents in the area would catch fire and the camp would go up in flames.
At some point the screaming escalated and the next thing Nesti heard was Gabe, another tent mate of theirs, yelling for those who had come out of their tents to put their hands on Xander. “Gabe is screaming, apply pressure, apply pressure, I didn’t know what to do but I knew that I didn’t want to leave the tent cause I didn’t want to get hurt.” Not long after Nesti told me that police sirens and the sounds of an ambulance could be heard. When they arrived on scene she hear the cops telling Jason and Hobbit to get up off of Xander, “they are like, no he’s been stabbed and is losing a lot of blood, Gabe kept yelling “apply pressure, apply pressure.”
The paramedics took over got him loaded on the gurney and wheeled him past Nesti’s tent. “When they took him past my tent I heard Xander say, “that @#$%i stabbed me, it hurts! I knew then that he was ok that he was going to make it, we need an angel like him here not there.” At this point Nesti raises a finger up towards the sky.
I visited Xander in the ICU a day after the stabbing. The doctor told him that if his friends hadn’t applied pressure on the wounds he would be dead. I asked him what started it all and he said he went over to the tent the smoke was coming from and told them to cook their drugs somewhere else and one of the guys in the tent came out and attacked him, stabbed him 5 times. His camp mates saved his life. They may be homeless but like each one of us they are “localized vibrations of the infinite goodness of God’s presence. Love is they’re very nature. Love is their first, middle, and last name.”
— Jaime Encinas
On a side note on December 6th 2024 a Boulder district court judge dismissed a high profile ACLU lawsuit challenging the city’s camping ban and the police and city officials immediately enforced the law by clearing out encampments and ticketing people who sleep outside. The ACLU continue to argue that the law criminalizes people who have no choice but to sleep outside.