So many things

So many things are gathered together in my mind and heart after what happened in Newtown, CT on Friday...things that at first might seem contradictory or something like magnets put the wrong way together. Yet, there they are...teaching me, challenging me, calling to me in love and sadness and anger and humility.

I believe evil exists and I believe there is light that no darkness can ever overcome.

I believe anger and compassion are not necessarily distant from one another...

I believe God welcomed with tenderness and extraordinary love each adult and child who died. I believe God welcomed too a wayward son.

I believe this day and every day is a day to tell people that I love them and that it shouldn't take a tragedy to remind me.

I believe that the children and faculty/staff were loved in this life by someone. I believe the shooter was too.

I believe there are times when to love someone is a difficult honor and calls for a courage that lives in the deep warm stone that steadies my center.

I believe that people do things I might not ever understand for reasons I might not ever know...yet, I do know intimately of pain and sadness, of hurt and anger, and my own capacity for sin.

I believe I can never know the day when something unspeakable will happen where I am; I can begin each morning and end each evening with "Thank You for loving me as you do...wholly, completely, and without reservation."