26 Acts of Kindness

How do you respond to senseless violence?

When I first heard about the killings in Newton, Connecticutt, I was, of course, appalled.  I didn't want to know all the gruesome details, but it seemed almost impossible to escape hearing more than anyone would ever want to imagine. I worried that by giving it so much importance, we were preparing the way for another gunman in search of his day of ... infamy?

How do you respond?  With sorrow and compassion for families that have lost their loved ones just when they were the most lovable?  With grief for the lost potential of so many bright, happy lives?  With anger?  With bewilderment?  My husband asked me why Americans, who proclaim their religious feelings so loudly, feel it necessary to be prepared to kill dozens if not hundreds of human beings in just a few minutes with an arsenal of automatic weapons.  He thought Christ said to turn the other cheek.  

Then I saw Nicholas Kristof's column.  http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/16/opinion/sunday/kristof-do-we-have-the-courage-to-stop-this.html?smid=fb-share&_r=0

As he points out: "The Occupational Safety and Health Administration has five pages of regulations about ladders, while federal authorities shrug at serious curbs on firearms. Ladders kill around 300 Americans a year, and guns 30,000.

We even regulate toy guns, by requiring orange tips — but lawmakers don’t have the gumption to stand up to National Rifle Association extremists and regulate real guns as carefully as we do toys. What do we make of the contrast between heroic teachers who stand up to a gunman and craven, feckless politicians who won’t stand up to the N.R.A.?

On Facebook Nicholas directed readers to Anne Curry's page.  She suggests that in memory of the victims people commit 26 acts of kindness. This spoke to me immediately because it's something I can do and it's something positive and loving in response to a meaningless act of hate.  I can do it now, today, and I don't have to wait for an act of Congress.  And perhaps, somewhere there is a child, a young person who is suffering and will be helped by one of those acts of kindness, helped to grow into a healthy, sane adult.  

For behind this tragedy is another, the tragedy of a lost child that didn't get the help he needed, a child who learned to respond to hate and suffering with more hate and more suffering in an unending spiral of insane violence.  And I remembered Elvis' wonderful song, "In the Ghetto."  

"People, don't you understand?  A child needs a helping hand.  Or he's gonna be an angry young man."

So I hope you who are reading this will respond to the tragedy of Newton with your own 26 acts of kindness.