Like everyone else, I will be a long time getting over the thought of first graders slaughtered in their classroom, and imagining what my life would have been like if I had had to collect the bullet-riddled body of my daughter in her elementary school. Truthfully, I could not get the pain of those parents or the children in the school out of my head.
How does one ever get beyond that? You can feel the collective pain and shock, feel many people turn inward, to reflection, many others outward, to action. Americans are a highly-distractable people. They do not pay attention to much of anything for long. Crises and traumas don’t last very long in the world of cool information devices – cable channels, text messages, social media and smart phones. All that news, and we never seem to grasp the big story. We love to name our traumas – this one is called Newtown, and the weather channel has begun naming winter storms this year, the better to dramatize and personify the weather and get us to worry about it and sell some ads. This week, it’s “Draco,” a big storm tearing through the West. There is Emergency Preparedness, every day on every channel. Yet we seem to always be ready for the wrong things. Could anything have prepared us for Newtown?
I wrote this morning that the shadow of this awful thing hangs like a gray sky over Christmas, and I wondered if I am supposed to move on, and into the spirit of the holidays, or not. I was surprised by the response. I thought people needed to talk about something else, but in some ways, I see they need to talk about this. It seems this is not something one should move past. I will eagerly come out of my self-imposed political exile to help people of good will who want to keep this from ever happening again. It is a week for heartsickness – the killing of children, the rush of politicians to return to their self-interested and eternal squabbling as soon as possible, stomach-turning stuff, all of it. Our world seems broken.
As with other challenges in my life, I turned to my spiritual life for direction. I read, meditated, walked, talked with Maria. I wondered what it might offer me in the way of help.
I am weary of the gray sky. Brother, can you spare some light?
The choice for me is clear. Will I see this world as a dangerous and menacing and irrational place? Or will I choose to focus as well on the other side of darkness – the bravery, compassion, community and connections that have touched so many souls and spirits?
Some things are becoming clear for me. There is nothing else I need to know about the killer, or his family. I know all of the details of the murders that I need to know. We have already sacrificed Thanksgiving to Target and Wal-Mart and Sears, and I am not ready to give up Christmas and the holidays to a profoundly damaged young killer. That is giving him – them – too much. Seeing this horror reworked a hundred times a day – tempting, even addictive when something is almost beyond comprehension – is another kind of poison. I don’t need to do it.
I am taking a day or two off with Maria and we are going to an inn in Vermont, as we do every now and then, to refresh, disconnect from our devices, to seek the signals amidst all the noise, to feed our love and our creative souls. It seems very appropriate right now. Light follows darkness. Grief follows love. But this gloom is not a place for me to light, to get stuck. This is not life, it is the absence of life. Healing is the only good choice, that and making sure that these are the last children in our country who are gunned down in their schools or anywhere else. I am a human being, and I cannot – will not – live in a permanent state of grief and horror. Every awful thing, every bit of pain and sorrow has a gift hidden within. If I feel sad, I also feel nourished and connected uplifted, because I do not know of a good and decent soul who does not feel exactly the same way I do, and I am not used to being in such numerous company. It is hopeful. We are awakened, pulled away from the stock tickers, movies-on-demand, football games and holiday shopping, at least for a bit, maybe longer this time.
I’ll be off until Friday, giving my voice and your eyes and ears a rest, and when I come back I intend to be back in life and thinking hard about our Christmas day. Maria and I will be spending Christmas on the farm and my newest idea is to cook a special meal and get a gift of some small kind for each of the animals in our care – animals are such a big part of the Christmas idea. I’d like to thank each and everyone of them individually for the riches and love and work they have brought into our lives. Each dog, each donkey, the barn cat, the sheep, three hens and rooster. I think the sun is peeking through already.
