We had a different post prepared for today, but in light of the tragedies in both Oregon and Connecticut, it seems important to devote this week to the power, and importance, of your leadership to the healing of our world.
There is, in each of us, a leader.
We urge you to bring the leader in you forward and offer your voice to help build and maintain healthy: streets, neighborhoods, communities, friends, co-workers, and family.
By bringing the leader in you forward, you also bring the hero within you forward. You see, acts of heroism always originate from ordinary people. Heroism is the result of going about our day and, when it is interrupted by the unspeakable, responding with the conviction that every child is my child, every woman is my sister, and every man is my brother.
We saw it with September 11th, Katrina, Sandy, and now in a mall in Oregon and an elementary school in Connecticut. We have all heard the stories of people who acted without regard for their own safety to offer aid, protection, and comfort to people who were, by right, total strangers. Leaders and heroes don’t see strangers; they see the connection that we all share.
If, as a nation, we want a different outcome for our future, we have to provide new voices to the discussion – we have to speak up against the rhetoric and the spin that is used to divide us. We must stand together as parents, daughters, sons, sisters and brothers and insist that we make the world safer for all of our children.
The airwaves have already begun stirring the debate about guns and creating two camps – those for and those against. Yet, if we step back, and pause, we believe that it’s possible to hear that we all want the same basic thing:
help for those who are struggling with severe depression and mental illness,
limited access to firearms (for those who are unable to handle them responsibly),
and freedom from fear – whether in an elementary school or a shopping mall.