Let Us Come Together

Let us talk together.

Let us talk about how we can get help to the mentally ill before it is too late. Let us talk about better ways to keep guns out of the hands of those who shouldn't have them. Let us talk about the forces in our culture that increase rage, belligerence, and despair. Let us talk about ways to keep our children safer while also preserving the joys of childhood, without allowing a single extreme event to define their world in stifling ways.

Let us act together.

Let us reach out to the families who have lost their precious children, to do what we can as a nation to provide comfort in the midst of horror. Let us live out lives in that infectious spirit of love, that spirit of grace and care and mercy that is, in the end, the surest antidote to the spirit of violence that gives rise to horror. Let us listen and talk with those who disagree with us, but in the end let us act on conscience--letting our government representatives know where we stand, engaging in nonviolent direct action when we feel called to do so, working to make the changes in our local communities that we believe in.

Let us dream together.

Let us dream of a better world, and let our dreams shape our conversations and our actions. Let us dream, but while we dream let us remember that no matter what changes we make, no matter how much real progress we make, the world will always be a place where horror can and will strike. When it does, let us not fall into despair or apathy or a loss of purpose. Let us instead hold hands in the face of horror and remind each other of our dreams.

Let us reach beyond ourselves.

Let us turn our hope towards a power which can do more than we can ever do. Let us light candles and say prayers and reach for that elusive good which has the power to transform us from within, and so transform our world one living soul at a time. Let us keep talking, acting, and dreaming of something greater than we can ever realize alone, something whose intimations are to be found in that spirit that we feel among us when we come together in compassion and patience and good will.

No matter our differences and disagreements, our passions and our fears, let us now, in this moment, come together.