Peace: Are You Available?

Something in me was not letting what happened at Sandy Hook Elementary School in.  Maybe it was because I felt numb looking at the picture of the young man with dead eyes.   Or maybe it was because I could feel the beginnings of a question I knew I couldn’t answer forming in the back of my mind.
Why?

Why is this happening again?

Didn’t a mass shooting just happen at a Colorado theater?  Didn’t a mass shooting just happen in the food court at the Eaton Centre, a mall where I hung out as a teenager?  Why when I search “mass shooting” on the internet, do the results return a “guide”?

Then yesterday I saw this picture.

Sweet little babies.

Joyful.

Innocent.

It’s easy to go into hiding when your questions are too big, when nobody around you has the answers.  But living in the question keeps you present to where the solution lies.

Why are we being fed a steady diet of stories about people who kill other people?  Why are television dramas, news stories and video games so obsessed with revealing the details that show step-by-step how those people do it?

Anderson Cooper has said, “While as a society we are moving toward greater inclusion and equality for all people, the tide of history only advances when people make themselves fully visible.”

Being visible not only means to be obvious to the eye, but also to be available.

[Tweet “Being visible not only means to be obvious to the eye, but also to be available.”]

So here is what I am available for.

I am available to take a stand for peace and love.  I am available to say what is not popular in the name of it.  I will speak out, sign a petition, write a letter, change the channel, make a phone call, deny a purchase, and say NO more until I am seen.

I am available to take action, however small, however insignificant I may feel it is in the moment, knowing that even tiny steps made by just a small group can change the way things are, so that going forward, sweet, little babies are safe.