Children have died today, shot down while at school. The details are still sketchy. The reason why, unknown. At this moment, 20 children under the age of 10 and 7 adults, including the gunman, are dead in Newtown, CT. Twenty-seven lives have ended and there is no way for me to comprehend it. No matter how I try, it doesn’t make sense and because it doesn’t make sense to me and because I feel at a loss, I write… I try to put into words what I’m feeling, what I’m thinking and I hope, in the end, something makes sense…
I began seeing glimpses that “something unbelievably horrifying” had just happened right after I came off the air with today’s show on Moments of Awakening about the Villain Angle. In the beginning, I was numb, when I heard the news. I was hit so hard by the impact of it, I immediately shut down. I couldn’t comprehend what I was seeing. The first reporting of it that I spied was from a young lady who over-dramatizes everything, so I didn’t pay it much heed. But then, the cascade of information began flowing and I tapped into the emotions from Connecticut and I felt the truth.
The children were at school… a space that I’ve tricked myself into believing is safe for my daughter. I think we all want to believe our children are safe at school and that is why the increase of bullying incidences are so disturbing – it chips away at the false sense of security we have about the sanctity of schools. This mass killing today totally disintegrates that already frail shell.
When sharing the news with my daughter, who had been protected from it all day because she was in school and didn’t have access to the news reports, she asked me, “What is wrong with society?!” I don’t know how to answer her on that one. I don’t know how to help her understand this anymore than I knew how to help her understand the horrors of September 11, 2001. I feel the same sort of impotency to protect my child today as I felt back then, as I watched the Twin Towers fall over and over and over. I feel the same inability to comfort her, her big, beautiful eyes staring at me all full of fear and being unable to understand why people would ever choose to behave in such a way. I can’t help her understand because I, myself, don’t understand.
Fear, sadness, despair… it’s running rampant through humankind and people are responding in ways that are tragically longstanding. Adam Lanza, who is the alleged shooter, was only 20 years old and he made a decision for reasons we may never be able to comprehend. But, he made this decision nonetheless. He chose to enter that school, into that kindergarten room where his mother was the teacher and shoot those children and his mother. Longstanding results. Another scar is added on the face of America.
I cannot imagine the horror that the residents of Newtown are experiencing right now. I cannot imagine how the friends and families of the fallen feel right now. I cannot imagine how the survivors feel. I cannot imagine how the Lanza family feels. I cannot even begin to imagine any of that.
But I can feel it.
There will be many shouting about gun control and higher security. There will be many pointing fingers and placing blame. There will be name calling and hatefulness and a push for somebody to pay for this crime. There will be allegations about who Adam Lanza was, why he did what he did and how his parents could have stopped this. There will be much hollering for, “Something to be done about this!”
And, while I know that is all coming – and probably is already bouncing around the airwaves – I am choosing to turn within and find the Light of Love within me and focus on that. That Love is what I want to magnify and expand. That Love is what I want for myself and for my child and for my loved ones and for those who were touched by this tragedy. Because, in reality, even if I do not know one soul that was killed or even if I don’t know someone who had a family member killed, I am touched by that experience today. It is now part of our collective DNA, our history. It is now part of the story of humankind and, therefore, it is me, it is you. So I turn within and seek Grace. I seek Love.
The call to prayer and love has gone out far and wide. It doesn’t matter how you pray, what God, Goddess, or Gods you believe in or if you believe in no god at all… what matters is that you choose into Love right now. In light of the request for prayer and Love, in light of the fact that I still am bewildered and confused and so very sad, I choose to practice radical accountability and pray the Ho’oponopono prayer. Join with me, will you?
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tNJ3viKMcHU]
