It's too soon, really. We don't even know who this guy was... what he stood for... whether he was making a statement or acting from illness. Assuming that a person who shoots up a school full of mere children can be anything but ill.
But we all have our reactions. I have many, myself.
My first reaction... that one that is unfiltered, that comes without thought. Perhaps what people would say is my true reaction, but what I would say is simply my unexamined reaction. It's not like acting spontaneously is more authentic than putting thought into what you believe, after all.
My first reaction was this: Really? Another school shooting? Not in disbelief, but perhaps in that "oh, please... this is getting old" sense. As in, this is becoming so freaking commonplace that it barely makes the radar of things that catch my interest.
But I didn't stop there because these are real people involved, and fortunately, I have many facebook friends that are more quickly compassionate than I am. And they reminded me of that. Real people. Real children gone. Real parents who will never see their child graduate, get married, have children. Real friends who survived and will feel guilty for it.
And my heart began to break.
But still I didn't stop. I began to wonder about this country of ours... one that is intent on protecting the world with military force. To remove dictators from power because of the oppression caused. Yet that is filled with other forms of oppression itself. Does our government harm us? No. Do I fear that my child will step on an abandoned landmine and lose his legs to an old war? No.
In fact, I don't have much to fear in my daily life. But what I do see that concerns me is this level of anger - and beneath that, hurt - that seems so commonplace. And I wonder what people are holding onto so tightly that they decide the solution could ever be to murder young children en masse.
And I think about this country of ours that presidential candidates call the greatest country on earth, and I wonder why we continue to delude ourselves. Because I am a patriot, but because I love my country, I admit that it is clearly, horribly flawed.
There is something deep within us that is causing school shootings to be something unsurprising. It is something that politics can't change. It is a need that is never met through material means. It is something only relationships can save.
I am grieving... grieving because we are too independent for our own good, and we as a culture have allowed personal responsibility to grow into the monster of lonliness. And the only solution on the table is political handouts. It's not about politics. It's about relationships. It's not about gun control, it's about love.
There are children today who live no more. And there are children today who will grow up with the anger inside them to pull the trigger on another generation.
And what are we doing to stop that?
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