December 16th

On December 14th 2012 26 teachers and children went to school one morning and never came back home.

Newton Connecticut was devastated.  Even in a nation where school shootings have become common, and public mass shootings almost rampant, the deaths of 20 young grade-schoolers and the adults who tried to protect them was shocking.  It was one of the deadliest school shootings in US history.  Families were left shattered, and while the nation mourned, at the end of the day nothing much changed.

On December 16th 2014 at least 145--maybe more--teachers and children went to school one morning and never came back home.  

The lives of hundreds if not thousands of people in Peshawar Pakistan can never again be the same.  Families have been gutted and if healing is even possible it will take decades if not years.  A nation, and a world, are in shock.  The idea that children can be targets goes far beyond unsettling, and reminds us that evil exists in every corner of the world.

Watching the news coverage unfold from the European side of the pond, I can only hope that as the hyperbole begins my US friends and family have a chance to read articles that go beyond our usual understanding of violence in the middle east as "Terrorism" (even if in this case it may well be) and dismissing the actions of these men as representative of Islam in any way, shape or form.  I hope that the pictures splashed across the internet and the front lines of papers are those of families standing together, mosques worshiping and mourning, mothers holding hands.  Not photos of seven men holding guns.  I  hope that the stories told are those of students accomplishments and dreams.  Not the stories of violent idealists who have hijacked a religion and a God to justify the destruction they seek in the world.  

I can only hope that when American families learn more and more about what happened on December 16th 2014, they are reminded that all people are human, and that the loss of a child in Pakistan is felt as deeply and horribly as the loss of a child in Newton.  That the tragedy of the future cut short is not lessened by where a child was born, what religion they worshiped or language they spoke.  And that we as a nation don't dismiss these deaths as easily as we dismiss the hundreds who die in ongoing drone strikes in the mountains of Pakistan and it's neighbors.  I can hope that this might remind us as a nation and a world, that a senseless death is just that; senseless.  That maybe a constant escalation of violence will not someday bring us peace.  That getting a bigger gun won't end the bloodshed.

But in a world full of violence, much of it precipitated and carried out by the US military, I suppose that's all I can do.  Is hope.