A
Turning Point
“In
every turn of ill-fortune the most unfortunate man is the one who
once was happy.”
Boethius
(c. 480-524 Rome)
The
killing of little children at Sandy Hook Elementary School in
Connecticut has thrown a pall over what is typically the most joyous
season of the year. For every American, it has overshadowed the
jubilee of both the Festival of Lights and the birth of Jesus. In my
Spirituality Class yesterday, we wrestled with the senselessness of
it, and the all too familiar scenario of a lone, madman walking into
a crowd of unsuspecting people and opening fire with semiautomatic
weapons. We searched our hearts for what we, as individuals and as a
community, can do in response.
One
young African American man in the class pointed out that it was the
bombing of the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church in September of 1963,
which killed four little girls, that turned the tide of the Civil
Rights movement. He also expressed his view that it was the
non-violent protesters, and not the militant Black Panthers, who
moved the hearts of a nation, and a President, to change the laws of
segregation. He suggested that perhaps this is our watershed moment
for changing the laws that allow the sale of semiautomatic weapons.
If this barbaric act does not change hearts, I don't know what can.
One
of the statistics that our minister pointed out in her sermon
yesterday is that we have had more gun-related homicides in
Birmingham in the last two weeks than Great Britain, where stringent
gun laws prevail, had in the past year. That is an astounding comment
in response to the claim that the control of semiautomatic weapons
will not make a difference in the crime rate.
Our
church has called a special meeting for Wednesday night to draft our
response to this terrible event, and to hopefully assuage our own
guilt for being among the silent minority, who by our very
passiveness have allowed the violence to continue.
We must also
consider the difficulty of obtaining mental health services in this
country—especially if you don't have money or health insurance.
Even for those of us fortunate enough to have insurance, many
policies don't cover mental health services. We have, for the most
part because of budget considerations, closed the institutions, as
well as the community mental health centers that once served this
population. And we have done so to our own peril.
Newtown,
Connecticut could be anywhere in the United States. It was the
unlikeliest of places for a mass murder to take place. We must open
our eyes, and open our hearts, and use our good brains to solve this
problem so that this joyous time of year is never again blighted by
the killing of our most precious possession—our children.
In
the spirit,
Jane
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