Since I posted my first Perspectives on Ferguson, four days ago, this powerful local uprising into our increasingly obvious police state —

Ferguson: No Justice in American Police State

— appears to be over, the situation “calmed down.”

Calm Holds in Streets of Ferguson Missouri, Two Weeks After Police Shooting

However, it is worth noting that when a similar police shooting recently presented itself in Los Angeles, local police responded quite differently. Having learned from prior experience with such flashpoints, they had actually bonded with the community they serve. Perhaps the L.A. police could now spread their wisdom to Ferguson and any other police department where separation and hotheadedness rule?

Despite Similar Shooting, Los Angeles “Bank of Trust” Tempers Reaction

Here’s a journalist who left Ferguson in disgust. Not because of the police, or the people, but because of the other journalists, too many of whom, he said, appeared to be crawling all over each other to be the first to cash in on possible fame from the international spotlight.

I Will Not Be Returning to Ferguson

Meanwhile, as long as police get all that gear from the military, it’s hard to see how they can avoid thinking they are still immortal little boys playing with powerful war toys. I imagine that it takes an unusually aware person to wear a militarized uniform and not subsume his or her personality into the clanking, pugnacious, warrior role.

We can help. Check this out, an interactive map of just where all the military toys have gone across America. What went to your local area?

Mapping the Spread of Military Surplus Gear

Then go to change.org and sign the petition to U.S. Governors.

Tell Your Governor: Don’t Militarize My Block!

Meanwhile, even President Obama has decided, between golf swings, to check into the militarization of the police in the U.S.

Obama Orders Review of Police Use of Military Hardware

And most heartening of all, the many articles I’ve noticed (just google “race relations Ferguson”) that address the aftermath of this newly resurfaced understanding that 51 years after Martin Luther King’s “I have a Dream” speech on August 28, 1963, difficult race relations in the U.S remain. And yet, and yet. 51 years is a Chiron cycle. The symbolism of Chiron, in astrology, is “the wound” and “the healing of the wound.” And truly, it does appear to me that there is a subtly growing atmospheric change, a newly embraced and spreading empathy for all those who are marginalized.

Yes, as Chiron returns to the place it occupied 51 years ago, one cycle is completed and another one begins. Ferguson triggered the opening. Let us feel gratitude. For we are beginning to recognize with Martin Luther King, in our bones and in our hearts, that there is no separation, that I am you and you are me.