Won't you be my neighbor?

I took my family out to see the new documentary about Mr Rogers, "Won't You Be My Neighbor?"  It's a lovely film.  I think I cried the whole way through it.  There was something good about watching it in a theater and sensing other people getting choked up as well.  My eyes hurt for hours afterward, and I found it very hard to sleep that night because there was so much going through my mind and pulling at my heart.

Mr Rogers was genuinely kind in a way that is far too rare in this world.  We may never see another like him.  There are many people I love and admire and that I have felt lucky to learn from, but Mr Rogers managed to distill the core of what humanity should be centered around more simply than anyone: That we are able to love and be loved.

My Ten Cents on Guns

I am heartbroken following the news about the children and educators shot to death in their school in Connecticut recently.  It's beyond horrible and impossible not to get emotional about.  My son curled up in my lap at the end of that day, exhausted after the happy work of kindergarten and then picking out a Christmas tree and hanging stockings and untangling strings of lights.  He fell asleep almost as soon as he nestled into my lap there in the dining room where I was trying to get some tasks done at the table.  Such a sweet, perfect, innocent face, freckles across his nose, breathing softly, safe and innocent and alive.  I burst into tears thinking of the parents who weren't going to get to hold their children anymore and wondering how someone could look into such a face as my son's and choose to destroy it.  I struggle every day to err on the side of compassion whenever possible, but I have very little to spare for people who harm children.  As the most obvious of baselines I would hope we can all agree that protecting children from brutality and vicious murder is a worthy goal of our society.  Just because there is an emotional component to this position doesn't make it less valid because arguably violence is damaging to many levels of our well being.

I've written before how I believe there is a distinction between rural use of guns versus their role in densely populated areas.  I still think that's true, but today I am thinking about cities.  Because I think we have come to such a dangerous and twisted place that I don't even understand the arguments coming from people about why we should all have such easy access to guns.  We need to stop and reassess without being immediately defensive.  We need to weigh the truth of what is happening now against our preconceived assumptions of what we want or think we deserve.

Because if we have reached a point in our society where the murder of twenty children in their school seems like just the unfortunate price we must pay for a particular interpretation of an amendment of our constitution, then something is very wrong.