Everyone is horrified and stunned by the awful events in Newtown CT today. Everyone is saddened, and shocked. We all hurt.
This is community. We look at those lovely little faces at Sandy Hook School, and we hurt for them and their families. We hurt because we are all a community of caring. I immediately saw my children at that age as I watched the news reports today. I saw the faces of the little ones I had in my daycare way back when. We all see these precious little ones and we care about them.
I wasn’t there, of course. But I could feel myself there. I recognize the look of the neighborhood, the small rural town. I’ve lived somewhere just like that in western New England. I took my kids to the small local school, dropped them off and expected they would be safe, that their greatest worry would be homework. I have gazed at little faces during reading time, and wondered which one would grow up to be the next story teller.
My sister is a preschool teacher. I see her as I look at the teachers on the news, or in the photo of the kids being led from the school to the fire house. And of course I see friends and neighbors in the faces of all the townspeople of Newtown Connecticut.
We don’t need to know anything more than “a child was hurt” to touch our naturally caring and empathic hearts.
I saw the interview with one of the heroic teachers, who not only got the kids into a locked room, but then did everything to comfort them. She said that if they were going to die, she didn’t want the horrors to be the last things those kids heard. She wanted them to hear love and comfort.
And that’s what most people feel when with a child, you feel protective, caring and nurturing.
So, how could anyone, ANYONE, hurt a child? It is beyond our ability to understand, but we ask. And we all want to know why? Why did this happen, so we can make sure it doesn’t happen again.
I don’t know how, but somehow – a parent, a family, a community – will somehow do the impossible and go on.
In spite of darkness, in spite of unthinkable grief, in spite of this crippling pain, they will go on.
I hope they know that in sister communities across the world, we are holding them in our prayers wishing for their comfort, and peace in their hearts.
And we are all asking “why”.
A view from the nest 