For the first take, see this:

I have always been struck by the paradox of Mohammed Ali, his capacity to embrace and fully express two opposing sides of his own nature: fighter and peace lover. In fact, one might say that Ali’s presence was so enormous that he could serve as an outsized archetype for both these conflicting aspects of human nature, simultaneously.

I recently received an email from my brother Mark about Billy Crystal’s eulogy for Ali at his funeral last Friday, but didn’t’ watch it. Not until this morning, when I was nudged to do so by friend Ted, in a message titled “required.” Okay!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wdmU6MMW5bg

I doubt that it’s lost on me or anybody else that the funeral of this gigantic peace-loving Muslim black man was held on the same weekend as the massive shooting in Orlando, Florida, by, of course, a Muslim, “Omar,” also, supposedly, a homophobe.

And again, of course, there are skeptics to the “official story,” for example —

Five Reasons to Question the Official Story of the Orlando Mass Shooting

— as always with these kinds of “random” collective events to inspire fear, division and hatred, which are, obviously, ramping up as time goes on.

Check this out:

The agonizing, exquisite contradiction of our collective remembrance of Ali’s greatness juxtaposed with the horrifying destruction triggered by the latest, and so far, greatest, false flag? “caused” by, supposedly, of course, another lone-male-shooter,”Omar”: his supposed hatred? mind-controlled Manchurian candidate robotism? — is something that is seemingly impossible to allow in, for all but Trump and his minions who revel in their hatred of (superiority to) “the Other.” The rest of us, and that’s most of us, quaver at the thought that these two supremely dichotomous events could co-exist in the same world, in time, much less in our consciousness. We want to focus on one or the other, not both. We want to condemn the one as we praise the other.

But we can’t. We must stand in the still center of all the catalytic forces of this terrifying/exhilarating world crashing in on us faster and faster, with no time to breathe, no time to lose. Without flinching. Without a flicker of fear. Or hope. Only by standing firmly on Mother Earth while stretching our psyches to the absolute breaking point can we break through into compassionate witnessing of all, all of it. Only our capacity to be with the whole — no matter what — can trigger the transformation we are being called to undergo: from duality to unity, serving all that is with all that we are, forever and ever. Amen.