There is a seventeen second video about how there is more to be seen than what appears at first glance. What looks like a barren patch of hillside bursts into a herd of animals running. I don't know what the queue is for them to all spring at once but apparently they do.

It would be easy to look at the wall of anger around the events in Ferguson and believe there is no hope. Yet after reading a few articles suddenly I found signs of compassion springing up like bucks from behind the rocks.

A police chief in Nashville refused to prosecute any protestors who were not damaging property or citizens. A young woman asked a St. Louis officer why he hates her and he said he doesn't hate her. He wants to hug her. So he did. An officer who found a woman with two small children outside in the freezing weather paid for them to stay in a motel for the night.

There is no doubt that the wall exists. But it is also true that compassion emerges in unexpected places.

Barriers show up inside marriages too. John Gottman calls it stonewalling. While I can have elaborate opinions about the conflicts in Missouri, or Gaza, or Best Buy on Black Friday, the real place to implement change is on my home turf.