It Feels Different

Maybe this time is different. It feels different.  It felt different in worship this past Sunday morning.  The intensity of the congregation was palpable during the time that we focused on Sandy Hook Elementary.  Comments after worship showed that we had all been thinking about Sandy Hook and share, if dimly and at a distance, in the grief being felt there.  The media coverage, at least on CNN and MSNBC, feels different, too.  The reporters clearly have been swept up in the pain of the moment.  With the President taking the lead, political leaders have vowed to go to the mats for gun control legislation, and while most of them are Democrats there have been some Republican voices as well.  The NRA has gone silent, as it does at these times, but a New York Times posting (here) reminds us that silence is its common tactic.  It waits and then frustrates any gun legislation later.  This time, however, the NRA silence seems to be...well, a deeper silence.  And, there is the larger subject of our "national culture of violence," which is again being taken up.  There's a realization that mental health needs to be looked at again.

In all of this, the thing that makes Sandy Hook different is the tone.  This one hurt because of the ages of the children and the bravery of the teachers.  It is bad enough when something like this happens to 16 year-olds in a high school, but six year-olds and kids who were only seven?  This hurts even more.  I suspect that Sandy Hook also hurts still more because of the locale—a quiet, safe suburb, one of the last places we associate with violence like this.  Yes, the ongoing humanitarian crises in places like Syria take far, far more innocent lives, and, yes, children and innocent by-standers die virtually every day in our nation at the hands of shooters.  Sandy Hook, somehow, brings all of that into a new focus esp. because of the ages of the twenty children and also because of where it happened.

For a time, if even for a few days, a week, or a little longer, we are a gentler nation.  It is striking how petty the politics in Washington suddenly seems, how strident.  And, for the moment, the tug of wills over the so-called "fiscal cliff" has become, at least, a little more civil, less shrill in tone.  The question is, of course, will it last?  The answer is probably a mixed one.  Will the NRA suddenly "come to Jesus"?  Probably not.  Will the political rhetoric heat up again?  Sure.  Will the government find to reduce these mass killings?  Not likely.  Will things go back to "the way they were"?  That is harder to say.  Superficially, one wonders if anything much will change.  But, more deeply, Sandy Hook may well be one more moment on the way to a less violent society.

All of the crime data indicates that we are becoming a less violent nation and that, at least in terms of state-sponsored violence, a less violent world.  After Sandy Hook, it could well be that we will become a nation still less tolerant of violence, if only a little less.  It could be that we will see gun violence still a little more for what it is, a national public health issue and not a constitutional one.  I have long believed that violence begets violence, but perhaps in this case it doesn't.  Perhaps in this case violence begets non-violence, which is a step in the direction of peace.  Only time will tell, but one senses that these beautiful kids and their brave teachers have not died in vain.

But, what a sad price for peace.