Not how we respond
Sandy Hook is not for me a question of how to respond: we must mourn, we must keep silence, we must respect.
It is a question of what is at root, what is my role, our role in the massacre? What have we accepted into our lives, did not raise our voices about, that made this possible?
Violence in video: games, television, movies. Violence is in our culture.
Separation everywhere: failure to ask how a neighbor or acquaintance is doing, one person per car, people in a group at the restaurant with their attention buried in an electronic gadget, all in the face of more people around us every day. Seeing others as objects standing in our way, rather than the path to our own souls.
Guns and mental illness: yes, these things contributed. But why? Were we so concerned with individual desires and avoiding contact with humans who had a “condition” that we forgot our own humanity was at stake? To respond only to guns and mental illness now would be to keep our response at surface level. Can we reach deep within so we find ways to reach out, to make ourselves vulnerable, to be human with the humans around us?
What do we choose now: violence, separation, or something that contributes to our pain; or vulnerability and not knowing and humanity? Can we come home to our whole selves?
:- Doug.
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