It has been a difficult week. We faced another shooting so close upon the shooting from just the week before our minds reeled. Then we heard it was a school, and they were children and their teachers and our hearts were broken. Our first reaction to this is despair, then grief for those lost, then anger and conflict over how to make this all stop.
I attended Rev. Kitty’s zoom call on Friday night and just sat quietly and listened to what everyone said, what she had to say and took it all in to that space of quiet. When we feel powerless our reaction is to take action, to make a difference, to change the course of future events.
I was most touched when Kitty said, we all are called to respond in different ways. I am a child of the 60’s and 70’s when you marched to make change, you carried a sign, and yelled out your ideas and thoughts with a group of like-minded people. I am always called to some kind of “action” in response to a happening such as this. When Kitty said this, my interior space relaxed just a bit and I realized I was judging myself for not getting angry, riled up, making a sign and looking for the next march date. I felt Release. My way is different now. And that is okay.
“A change in consciousness happens one person at a time.” ~Deepak Chopra
My experience of the days following this shooting was pain and heartache, but also an increased feeling of compassion. When I saw children and their parents I felt and sent extra love that they were together and when I saw Hispanic people I felt an extra tug of love go out to them with shared grief in the loss of beautiful souls… so senselessly. Extra kindness, extra compassion, and waves of love were sent out by me into the moment, into the world, with a heartfelt desire that one day very, very soon change will come.
A quote from Amanda Gorman’s newest poem:
“This alarm is how we know
We must be altered-
That we must differ or die,
That we must triumph or try.
Thus while hate cannot be terminated
It can be transformed.
Into a love that lets us live.”
So, here are some affirmations that speak to me about these times and our response:
“I hold space in consciousness for divine potential to come through.”
“I stand in the light of highest possibility in the flow of peace and love.”
“Two or more gathered agreeing on a possibility support each other to live out maximum potential.”
With love, Carol Gadbaw
