The Sandy Hook Elementary Edition

Friday, December 14th, 2012.

Like many parents in America – my morning started out like any other. Running late for school, my 5-year-old daughter rushed out the front door with me and down the driveway, barely a moment to say "goodbye" and "I love you" to the matriarch of the household.

We took our usual route down the state road to my daughter’s school – listening to Red Sky by the Pat Metheny Group (it’s her song choice du jour). 

We pulled into the school driveway and she unbuckled her seatbelt. Like every morning, I grabbed her backpack from the backseat while she opened her door.

Off ato Kindergarten she goes, hearing my mundane parting words:  “Be great today, Yaira.  I love you!” 

It’s funny. At the beginning of the school year, it was a hug and a kiss before she went off for class, but not anymore.  I get more or less a nod of the head and a smile. She’s already at that age.

The morning was like any other morning. By lunchtime – my world, our world – had been turned upside down in a most unimaginable way.

Word came across the wire of a shooting in the small town of Newtown, Connecticut.  A shooting at an elementary school. 

Early on, this felt an ominous and uncomfortable...  I became fixated on social media – Twitter and Facebook and livestreaming of the news in the area.

What unfolded in the coming hours was a horrifying unspeakable act that no one could have thought up in their worst nightmare.

A 20-year-old man-child forcing his way into an elementary school and slaughtering 26 people, including 20 small children, before taking his own life in a dastardly, detestable act of heinous violence.  

We all watched in horror as the number of the dead rose… the news growing more grim and confusing by the minute, each passing news update leaving us gasping for breath, fighting back tears.

I stared at the wallet-size photo of my daughter on Santa and Mrs. Claus’ lap that sat on my desk. I imagined just how empty and numb I would feel knowing the happiest season of all for a child as innocent and pure as my own would be forever void had this been a firsthand experience.

I wanted to cry.  I wanted to scream.  I wanted answers.  How did this happen?

My heart breaks for those affected by this tragedy. My soul weeps, my mind is cluttered, my hands tremble with fear, anxiety, and anger. 

I watched, eyes agape, as the President of the United States addressed the nation not as an elected official but as the father of two young girls. 

For one moment in history – we were the same man – experiencing the same thoughts and feelings, both doing our best to be strong for those watching us  while the visions of our daughters were heavy in our thoughts. We wept for those experiencing every parent’s worst nightmare.

Indeed. December 14th, 2012. Evil had found a new way to make its presence known to our collective society, leaving us bewildered and searching for answers that are undoubtedly impossible to fully understand.

Where do we go from here?

Our society is one of the most unique in all of human history, for its freedoms of choice and speech, the unfiltered theater of debate, the outpouring of love and support amidst humankind’s worst tragedies. 

We grieve for absolute strangers thousands of miles away, people we never knew existed.  We see in them ourselves, we feel the world grow less safe; for a moment in our lives the world we know ceases to make sense.

And in 21st Century America, home to the 24-hour news cycle, we sit and absorb every dime-store psychologist, doctor and detective break down every passing moment and every new piece of information, turning Monday morning quarterbacking into a minute-by-minute diatribe on “how this could have been avoided.”

Here we are.  After Columbine… after 9/11 … after Virginia Tech… after Middleton … no closer to the answer than we were at the beginning.

But here’s what I do know: Lost in the grieving, lost in the collective gathering of understanding, and lost in the need to cope with a world we don’t understand there lies the dreaded finger-pointing of blame. 

Blame is like a dagger digging into an open wound. It is a desperate attempt by those on one political, ideological, or religious side to castigate our fellow man, in some arrogant sense of entitlement and smug sense of psuedo-intellectualism.

So allow me to help.

For those of you who want to place blame on a lack of God in the public square:  Stop it right now. 

For one thing, we’ve heard stories of those in the midst of the Sandy Hook tragedy praying for and with their students while a maniac slaughtered those innocent people. 

Those of us in the faith know that evil exists in this world. We’re always and earnestly to pray for the innocent – those who need divine providence and protection. Yet the marriage of free will and the evil that lies in the heart of man means so long as we’re inhabiting this Earth, these things will happen. 

While the loss of life is tragic and unimaginable the human spirit guided by the Holy Spirit is what binds us together – with the strength of our fellow man through charity and the promise and hope of Divine peace and comfort.  

And then there’s the transcendental power of prayer – and not just for those innocent lives that were lost but for the family and friends of the shooter whose lives will never ever be the same… as they undoubtedly spend their lives wondering if they missed something, if they did something wrong, if they knew something that could have prevented this senseless tragedy. 

Those men and women, fathers, aunts, brothers, friends, neighbors, need to experience the hand and heart of a loving God as well. 

No, this is not the time for a national debate on God in school or prayer in school; frankly, no one can tell these teachers or students that they can’t pray in school.  Maybe, just maybe, instead of being so concerned about the war on religion in the country and if a lack of God’s presence in the public square is “right” or “wrong,” maybe that energy is best used to lift up those teachers, those students, and, yes, even those who don’t believe as we do. 

The time to debate the need for a cultural shift in America can and will be had in between atrocities. Now is when everything you’ve learned in church should be put into practice, for those who need it, for those who don’t understand it, for those who come against it.

For those of you secular “anti-gun” advocates, stop it right now.  Turning a national tragedy into a platform against the Second Amendment to the United States Constitution is tired and counter productive. 

Your blanket suggestions of “more gun regulations” is fruitless and hyper-reactionary.  A gun is a tool. Like a knife, a box cutter, a car, a plane, a hammer, rope, chain, an axe. Tens of millions of Americans legally own all sorts of firearms and practice responsible and safe firearm ownership.  

Wouldn’t it stand to reason that if it was the firearm that was the problem – we would experience an exponentially higher and more frequent atrocities?

The problem with this line of thinking is that it woefully diminishes the complex and complicated level of evil. Take the gun out of this young man’s hand does not stop this atrocity from occurring. Not in 21st Century America where a teenager can build homemade Molotov cocktails and devastating pipe bombs. 

In fact, I would venture that most of the folks who want even stricter gun legislation because they believe the gun is the problem would scoff at the idea of, say, stricter Internet regulations, bans on violent movies and video games and song lyrics, television shows, which many psychologists believe lead to a desensitization to violence?

Hypocrisy. As with everything – the truth of it all lies somewhere in the middle of both extremes.  Why do some Americans feel the need to own military assault rifles?  I don’t know. Why do some parents let their children watch violent movies and play violent video games?  Why are we a society so bent on medicating our children at the perceived sign of trouble?  What about the national conversation about the moral decline that comes with the devaluing of the family unit?  The modern emasculating of the role of fathers in a child’s life? 

An institutional failure to adequately educate our kids to the moral and ethical decisions that come with the choices they make?  Society’s inability to let its  citizens fail?  To learn from the wrongs they make instead of consistently trying to make everyone feel like a winner – give everyone a ribbon – and then send them out into a world unprepared for the challenges that await them?

No, this is more than just a conversation about prayer in the public square, and it’s more than just a conversation about guns. 

In our desperation to find answers for the questions in front of us – we instead reach for the same played-out straw men arguments to shamelessly and haughtily prop up our ideological differences when it’s what brings us together that the people in Newtown need right now.

Evil exists in the heart of man.  It has since the very beginning.  Short of abolishing every opportunity for citizens to interact with one another there is nothing mankind can do to eliminate evil.  But we can counter evil with good.  Evil may exist in the heart of man – but good can and will always triumph over evil.  You see that in the interfaith vigils.  You see that in the outpouring of financial, emotional and substantive support for the families of those affected.  You see good in the eyes and voices of a father who lost his daughter to a madman,  speaking about the power of forgiveness.

No, we may never understand what happened on December 14th, 2012, or why it happened or what we can do to ever keep it from happening again, but I do know this: Peace, Love, Reflection, Praise, Strength, and a collective sense of Family can supersede what sets us apart … if we allow it.

We owe it to the victims of Sandy Hook Elementary.  We owe it to the town of Newtown, Connecticut.  We owe it to our own children.  We owe it to each other.  It’s a shame that it takes a horror of this magnitude to remind us who we are, regardless of our faith, regardless of our ideology.  But it’s times like this we should seek solace and comfort in one another, reminding each other of what brings us together, not what separates us.

Friday night, I raced home from work and found my daughter enjoying a snack in the den, watching her favorite afternoon program. I gave her a hug and held her as if I held her for the first time. 

I held her for those fathers who would not hold their children that night.  I held her for those parents who, for whatever reason, aren’t holding their children. The world may never make complete sense. I know that I can’t shield her from evil forever. 

But I can love her every day of her life…. I can love her every day of mine.

Maybe, just maybe for the sake of those in Newtown, Connecticut, America can start there.