The Longest Stride of Soul

The Longest Stride of Soul
by Rebecca A Field

The world has gone mad!

Most recently exemplified by the massacre in Newtown, Connecticut, we grieve with you and feel the agony you suffer. We know your courage and your anger and we stand with you and support you in what was a meaningless act of cruelty. What happened there was horrible.

How to make sense of it is the question and everyone has his own answer, or, at least, must find his own answer.

The pro-gun lobby in Washington promotes the idea that anyone can have a gun. Could it be that stance is a misreading of the Constitution? The result is that many people have and can easily get guns. After all, the United States is a free country. We can do whatever we want!

Source: mychal-massie.com

The massacre lies solidly on the shoulders of the American people and people every- where, including foreign nations, because we all buy into fear and hatred. Too bad, when love is invariably the only answer and the tragedy begs the question: When are you going to realize that force (shooting) doesn’t work.

An interesting thing about blood is that it is necessary for life and strength, and its loss, unnecessarily, as we saw in the case of the massacre, is ignoble and horrible. Perhaps we need to rely on the prophetic wisdom that humanity is undergoing a huge shift, and may we hope it is out of the gun mode to a civilized, intelligent and compassionate way of solving problems!

Noah Pozner Newton’s victim…| Source: starbroeknews.com

Why kill innocent children, teachers and school staff? Their lives speak potently about the need for sanity, for love and right nurturing all through life.

Though I have not watched any television about this tragedy, I am not ignorant of the details and am aware of what happened. It happened for a reason—to alert the world—and Americans in particular—that guns and fear and the need for power by guns is no longer going to work and that we all must learn to love.

It is hard because we are human and have personalities, which means we have emotions, untrained and undisciplined emotions, and we misread freedom and use it as license instead of assuming responsibility for ourselves and for others.

Christopher Frye, British playwright and poet, in A Sleep of Prisoners says it well,

“Thank God our time is now when wrong comes up to face us everywhere,
Never to leave us till we take the longest stride of soul we ever took.
Affairs are now soul size. The enterprise is exploration into God.
Where are you making for? It takes so many thousand years to wake,
But will you wake for pity’s sake!”

The incident was horrible, yes, AND a world arresting occurrence that says, are you going to continue in your selfish and self-centered ways or are you willing to change and love. That’s what the children unfortunately gave their lives for.

Photo: Casey McNerthney/Hearst Newspapers/ SL