We are all connected

I’ve said this many times. We are all connected.

I see this connection when I read Facebook and Twitter and blog posts and read news articles and watch television newscasts about the horrific shooting on Friday morning at Sandy Creek Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut. We are all grieving together for the murders of those first grade children and their teachers and school administrators and that mother, the mother of the young man who took so many lives, including his own.

For even though probably no one reading this post now has ever met a single one of those people, we know that they are us.

They are our children and sisters and brothers and mothers and friends, our cousins’ playmates, our friends’ grandchildren, our fellow teachers, the children we see walking down our streets, the teachers we see on car duty, the principals we see at school functions, the mothers we see driving their kids to ball practice, the school counselors who consult with us about our children, our pets’ playmates, and our own first grade teachers and classmates of so long ago.

We know our community is very much like Newtown. We know we’d band together in the aftermath of tragedy. We know we’d hold and attend candlelight vigils, take food to families, say prayers at church and at home, hug our friends and family and even strangers.

Because in the midst of the hardest thing imaginable, in the midst of unspeakable grief and suffering, there are no strangers.

We know that those people we see on television and read about in newspapers and on our computer are us.

So we shed tears and talk with friends and sigh and say extra prayers and send love and light to the people of Newtown.

Because Newtown is Everytown. Newtown is my town. Newtown is your town. Its people are your people. Its people are my people.

We know this deep inside, in the place where we know what is really, really true. We know beyond knowing that they are us. Yes, we know this without any doubt.

We know this. We all know this.

Because we are all connected.