Change Comes in the Healing

                                                                                                        

This weekend, for some, was a weekend that passed all-to-quickly. For others it was tortuously and agonizingly slow. For all it was a weekend of disbelief, horror, loss, grief and many other words that fall piteously short of encapsulating what is still being felt over Friday’s events. While the storm has not subsided in Newtown, in other outlying areas the initial paralysis is wearing off. Power is returning. Roads are being re-opened. Yards and gardens are being cleared of debris. People are returning to the task of the Every-Day. Now a new storm is stirring. A storm of words.

Voices rail at the exploitation of grieving families and children being interviewed.

Voices call for the regulation and banning of guns.

Voices scream that mental health is misunderstood and help inaccessible.

Voices curse video games and entertainment for the violence of our culture.

Voices attribute words to people who never spoke them.

Voices mock the thought of a good God allowing such an atrocity.

Issues that already were polarized now register on the Richter scale. And the cacophony of voices makes me want to put my fingers in my ears and hum “Over the Rainbow” to dull the roar. Not because the words are wrong. But because of the way in which the words are spoken. Spoken in anger—nay, rage. The same rage that just snuffed out the light of 26 beautiful, innocent lives.

While my voice is meager and I offer only a few limited words, my hope is that these words be as small, lighted buoys in the great sea of verbiage.

We see everyday, Friday no exception, that hurt people hurt people. Yet we, as citizens of this country and fellow occupants of this ever-shrinking planet, must recognize that the same hurt that roils in our gut, also roils in the gut of the person spouting a doctrine diametrically opposed to ours. This willingness to recognize ourselves in others is what triggers empathy. And empathy prompts grace.

As a child, I received this apt definition of grace: to offer something that is undeserved. Grace is an undeserved gift.

The instinctive reaction to pain rarely is grace. Grace, genuine grace, is not a natural response. Yet, unless we stop and consider first our words, they may only serve to inflict more pain, stir more antipathy, and thus exacerbate everything we think our words are trying to assuage.

Therefore, let us measure our words. In a moment of deliberate stillness, allow empathy to bud and grace to grow.  Steal one or two (or two hundred) extra seconds before sending that Facebook message. Pause before publishing that blog post. Cease for a moment those twitchy, Tweeting fingers and consider if our words are a necessary antidote for the wounds we feel.

And, at times, silence may be our most gracious response. It may not be deserved, but there is great power in silence.

So let us take a breath, consider our words, and feel deeply this loss to our country. The grief most deeply—most acutely—felt, the greater the victory once healing begins. In the process of healing we are often granted understanding—a portion of wisdom—we formerly lacked. With that wisdom comes change.

Change comes in the healing not in the wounding. And, everything else aside, change is all any of us wants.

image credit:  sourceofinsight.com