Heartbreak

Dear ones, and I mean every reader, every American, every other human. Again today our hearts break as we read the news of the little children killed in Connecticut. Again we ask ourselves what we can do to prevent this violence, to change our laws and our culture and ourselves so that children are not in danger when they go to school. Again we weep. Friends and colleagues have been posting about the need for tighter gun control, and about the very human need to hug our children, any children, hard today. Both of those needs are true for me. And true, too, is the need to weep, to keen, to lament loudly. Sometimes at a memorial service a family member will warn me they might cry, or apologize later for crying too much. I usually say the same thing in response: this is the right time to cry. This is a moment that deserves the respect of our tears. And so if you are crying today, I say thank you. Thank you for having a heart that still breaks, for recognizing in these children your own children, for seeing that we are one human family and that when tragedy hits one of us it hits each of us. I will be crying too. Don't forget--after the crying, we organize, we protest, we legislate. But first, we weep. Again, we weep.