What a Place to Start

    With such a tragedy as the shootings in Connecticut, especially because it involves children, I've taken in the coverage in bits and pieces. It's too overwhelming to do otherwise. As a parent, the idea that it's possible to send your child off to school only to lose them to senseless violence is unspeakable.
    I've heard the attempts to find meaning from this loss, from the explanation that God, being a proper fan of modern etiquette, never goes where he's not wanted; to near-manic cries for more gun control or better mental healthcare.
    But this time, I'm not investing myself in these particular arguments. Of course, no one who knows me would be surprised to hear that I believe we need more of both gun control and mental healthcare, but I'm weary of  fighting against a mindset that says we should hold our guns more dear than our well-being.
   So, if I'm not going to fight.. what then? Well, I'm going to Love. Not the "hug my kids a little longer and more often" kind of Love, although there's plenty of that too. No, I'm talking about  Love as a way of being in this world- the verb kind of Love.
     I think that helping each other be more connected in this world is our best defense against the hopelessness and isolation these human beings must have felt before they did things that made it easy to label them as "other".  I believe the more invested we are in our community, the more accountability there is between the community and the citizens, and the more emotionally bonded we are to others, the saner we are as a society and the more psychologically grounded we are as individuals.
     So, I'm going to listen more, and "see" people more, and take an extra moment to let people, especially young people, know that they can make a difference, that they have a chance to change there corner of the planet, and that they matter, maybe not to the people that should care, but at least, to me.