What a heavy week. This morning I kept leaving my desk at work to go cry in the bathroom. All the precious tiny lives. All the kids I see hanging on to life at the hospital, all of the people there trying to keep them with us, all the weeks and months and years, and everything undone in a matter of seconds. There are bigger things to talk about, but there must always be a moment for us to feel.
Yes, conversations about gun control and mental illness. Yes, closer scrutiny of who is profiting from this violence-enforcing culture of paranoia. But my thoughts go towards the family that the shooter came from, his mother the intended target buried in the school full of bodies that just stood in his way. There is something bigger. Lack of a gun would not have prevented some sort of tragedy, although it might have saved some lives. But maybe not (http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2012/12/14/man-stabs-22-children-at-china-primary-school/). You don’t need a gun to turn your wounds upon the world. People will find weapons and ways to turn their pain inside out. Firearms are among the more extreme examples, but regardless of mental illness, we cause destruction every day when we neglect our own souls, when we cannot extend help and meet people where they are. Turn inward. Make peace. Then turn outward.