Connecticut State Police lead children from the Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn., following a shooting there Friday. Credit: Newtown Bee.
Some thoughts and a prayer after the latest mass killings, this time of elementary school students:
Banning all guns is necessary but not sufficient in light of the increasing violence in our society. We need a fundamental transformation as well as banning guns. Otherwise, we will now revert to the normal debate between liberals wanting more gun control and conservatives saying that it’s not guns that kill but people. Both are right. So here is what we need to do:
1. A constitutional amendment to ban all guns, and to create special holding units for hunting rifles to be held in control of locally elected officials in every neighborhood who keep the rifles under lock and key except when given to hunters during a hunting season and to be returned immediately thereafter, with all necessary criminal controls and penalties for those who do not return them in a timely manner and those who continue to hold on to their guns privately. No private ownership of guns of any sort. Police must similarly be disarmed, and allowed only to use billy clubs and mace, except in emergencies in which a judge signs a warrant for the temporary use of lethal force against someone who is using lethal force. Lesser measures (background checks, banning only extreme assault weapons, etc.) are insufficient and will have only slight impact.
2. We must create a track of education in every school and every grade level that teaches nonviolence both as a philosophy of life and as a practical way to live one’s life. This track must also teach nonviolent communication skills. Moreover it must teach children and teenagers and college students:
- How to value and care for everyone else on the planet including their parents, teachers, neighbors, friends, and future lovers or partners.
- How to deal with depression, anger, feelings of alienation, powerlessness, stress, and isolation.
- How to give support to those who are not functioning or are psychologically or spiritually impaired and how to find the correct help for people who need professional help.
- How to recognize and appreciate all the beauty and miraculous wonder of life itself, of the universe, and of human beings.
- How to appreciate and protect the planet from all those forces that are inadvertently destroying it.
- How to end poverty and share the resources of this planet with everyone equally in a planet-sustaining way.
- How to develop one’s own capacities as a spiritual, ethical, aesthetically and emotionally developed, mature and loving human being.
These are what we must seek. The liberals are right about step number one, but they don’t go as far as I propose. The conservatives are right that human beings and not just guns are the problem, but then they never develop or support an educational system that will teach people the skills we all need. Liberals fear introducing values into public education for fear that they’d be the wrong values. It’s time to stop that, and fight for a values-oriented education, based on the values of love, caring, kindness, generosity, and protection of the earth. Till that happens, conservatives will always have a good case for devaluing public education, and for saying that only religion teaches values (and liberals will prove their case by not creating an educational system that teaches any value other than “making it” or, in polite Obama talk, an “education that prepares our children to compete effectively in the global marketplace,” which de facto means, learning how to advance oneself at the expense of everyone else so that “you can be number one and make America number one”). Well, guess what helps make you or others number one: violence and power over others. And that message gets reinforced over and over and over again by television shows about crime and the police, about wars and violence, but also by the society valuing and rewarding soldiers who go off to kill innocent people in foreign wars to protect imperial interests. So, it takes a whole society to create pathological killers out of human beings who are not born that way, and it will take a societal effort plus individual efforts to get the pathological messages out of our consciousness and replace them with loving and caring messages and worldviews. But we can do it, and that is precisely what our Network of Spiritual Progressives is all about (read our Spiritual Covenant with America). Without this kind of change of consciousness, step one (banning guns) will be ineffective and possibly dangerous.
Meanwhile, for immediate relief, but not in replacement for collective action around the points discussed above, you might find some support in the prayer below which I urge you to read to yourself and family, to your friends and community.
And blessings to you and all whom you love, and Happy Chanukah and Merry Christmas and Happy Holiday Season to all!
God, Let Me Cry On Your Shoulder
A prayer after today’s school shooting in Newtown, Connecticut
by Rabbi Rachel Barenblat
God, let me cry on Your shoulder.
Rock me like a colicky baby.
Promise me You won’t forget
each of Your perfect reflections
killed today. Promise me
You won’t let me forget, either.
I’m hollow, stricken like a bell.
Make of my emptiness a channel
for Your boundless compassion.
Soothe the children who witnessed
things no child should see,
the teachers who tried to protect them
but couldn’t, the parents
who are torn apart with grief,
who will never kiss their beloveds again.
Strengthen the hands and hearts
of Your servants tasked with caring
for those wounded in body and spirit.
Help us to find meaning
in the tiny lights we kindle tonight.
Help us to trust
that our reserves of hope
and healing are enough
to carry us through.
We are Your hands: put us to work.
Ignite in us the unquenchable yearning
to reshape our world
so that violence against children
never happens again, anywhere.
We are Your grieving heart.
I’m in full agreement. Best article I’ve read on the subject. Thanks
my god you are an idiot. please tell me more about how criminals obey gun laws, i didn’t serve 3 tours in iraq so morons like you can turn this country into n.korea so do us all a favor and get out of our country you lunatic
* 8 million jews were slaughtered by the nazi’s because they disarmed the people first btw
USMC,
6 million Jews were murdered with gleeful cooperation of ordinary German citizens who would have outgunned any one who stood in their path. Guns don;t d del against tanks and cannons.
Eliminating the 2nd amendment is unrealistic, controlling the kind of guns ad who should not be allowed t purchase those guns in more realistic
No thanks, Bolshevik. You’re not fooling me.
To those of you who responded by choosing to attack Rabbi Lerner with name calling and the like, I would appreciate it if rather than attack the messenger you were willing to engage in a meaningful discussion about the issues raised in the article. What are your fears and concerns in response to the proposals put forth in the article? Name calling and finger pointing will get us nowhere, what we need is a willingness to engage in meaningful discussions. Are you willing?
Link exchange is nothing else however it is simply placing
the other person’s blog link on your page at proper place and other person will also do similar in support of you.
Let me first propose before U.S. citizens give up our guns that we should first follow the example of the government doing so first. As the largest arms dealer on the planet, by far, the U.S. government is also the most likely to use these weapons to control people and usurp governments. They arm opposition groups throughout the world to destabilize governments they do not like. For them, guns are a means to an end when diplomacy doesn’t work. Unfortunately, those with the most guns usually win the day, and those who don’t either disappear and/or live in fear. Rwanda was also a case where the government took away their citizen’s guns right before they were massacred with machetes. Do we trust our government enough to voluntarily give up guns? For many of us, we don’t.
By the way,I am all for a change of consciousness Rabbi, and I agree with you that we need to get these pathological and violent messages out of media and mass culture in general, however, I would just like to see the calls for gun control start from the top down, and have their destruction verified by independent third parties before the citizens give up our rights to defend ourselves.