The Innocent Ones Who are you, O Innocent Ones? Certainly it is each and all of you who died in your school While your grownups tried to save you, and died trying. But are we not each and every perso…

[the rev Carl Freeman Reynolds]

The Innocent Ones

Who are you, O Innocent Ones?

Certainly it is each and all of you who died in your school

While your grownups tried to save you, and died trying.

But are we not each and every person who died with you?

I am a parent who created you,

I am a grandmother, grandfather who created they who created you,

I am your brothers and sisters,

I am every member of your family. 

I am your teachers, your principle, your neighbors, your friends.

 

We all died with you on Friday.

Not a one of us is guilty of anything in need of punishment

Such as this

Such as anything like this.

 

We all are the Innocent Ones.

 

Such madness is a symptom of what it means to be a human being.

And the only solution is to make real the mandate to

Love each other as you love yourself.

People who are not loved have no reason to love.

People who are taught anger and hate have no reason to care.

So anger and hate and indifference consume them

Until they will kill as they have been killed.

 

Let us acknowledge the complacency of our innocence

And dedicate ourselves to the innocence

Of knowing that our love, given and received and given and received…

 Is the only salvation worth pursuing.

 

- The Rev. Carl F. Reynolds, 12/16/12

[Barbara Padgett]

I love this!I was in a convenience store when I first heard of the Connecticut school shootings as the news was being broadcast on a television installed there-simultaneously, the muzak was playing the Bing Crosby/David Bowie carol and they were singing the lines "Every child must be made aware....every child must be made to care...." I thought such a simple solution and yet we can't seem to get there....