BEAUTY LOST AND FOUND – The Legacy of Tragedy

To my dear friends around the world. I so appreciate your expressions of support—both spoken and unspoken—as we in the USA struggle to make sense
of the unspeakable cruelty in our midst.

Many of us are in mourning, and, coming as it has, during this colder, darker, season when many of us already struggle to embrace the purported joy of the winter holidays, it has hit us all pretty hard.

For me, spontaneous tears well up when I fully sense my oneness with those who’ve lost so much. Most of us are sad; some are angry; others, afraid. Some
just feel a dark malaise. But we all feel something. It hurts.

The world is no less beautiful
a place than it was before Newtown.

A DARK ROOM
While, of course, we all must mourn this in our own ways, I encourage you to let this fact seep in through the cracks in your grief: the world is no less beautiful a place than it was before Newtown.

Seeing that, knowing that, is hard when we feel stuck in a small room where ugliness seems to have sucked out all the air and light.

Certainly, we cannot deny the monster, but we can and must open the windows
and let the fresh air and light of beauty come back in where it ultimately, inevitably belongs…everywhere.

Their wondrous ways of seeing and sensing 
the world are a gift they’ve helped us 
to open, to delight in, to use every day.

Our normal, natural emotions conspire to weigh those windows shut. As we struggle to reclaim our spirits, we must remember that there is only one way to open those windows. Anger, fear, sorrow and despair won't do it; they’re all stuck with us inside that dark room.

The gradual relief of our pain is awfully hard to grasp at a time like this, because the lesson lies in exactly the same place where our grief is focused: in the sweet, innocent eyes of those young children.

THE EYES OF A CHILD
One is never too old to see the world like a five- or six-year-old. But it is hard for us because, as adults, we bear the burdens of knowledge, experience and responsibility.

Nonetheless, wouldn’t the greatest honor we could possibly bring to the memory of those beautiful children be to understand that their wondrous ways of seeing and sensing the world are a gift that they’ve helped us to open, to delight in, to use every day?

We must not forget that we all still have those eyes, those eyes of a child. For it is that gift that will not only give us comfort, but ultimately lend us the clarity, the wisdom, the loving spirit and the resolve to make our country a safer, happier, more humane place.