I the wake of the heinous school massacre that took place on this morning, we are all dealing with painful and complicated feelings. As parents, we put ourselves straight into the shoes of those who have lost small children, and we weep for them – I am still weeping. I picked up my 11 year-old daughter and her friends shortly after the news struck. They were all full of last-day-of school joy – clutching their secret-Santa gifts. I didn’t want to dampen their spirits, but they obviously needed to know about this awful tragedy. I explained it in the most sensitive way that I could, and they sunk back into their seats – their eyes downcast. The questions started…
How do we grapple with such sadness? How to we process it and teach our children to pray? My daughter won’t pray to a “God in the Sky” because she doesn’t believe that a benevolent God would allow innocent children to be killed. Ugh – it’s a thorny issue. They are, however, praying for the families whose lives have been torn apart by grief.
If you, too, are discussing this painful tragedy with your kids, PBS kids has some helpful tips on what to say, and how to listen.
I love a book called, When Things Fall Apart by Pema Chodron. Although not a Buddhist myself, I am open to any philosophy or religion that offers prayers and writings that make sense to me. In recent times of intense personal grief, I have found great solace in this book. Let me leave you with a brief passage to digest today:
“Life is glorious, but life is also wretched. It is both. Appreciating the gloriousness inspires us, encourages us, cheers us up, gives us a bigger perspective, energizes us. We feel connected. But if that’s all that’s happening, we get arrogant and start to look down on others, and there is a sense of making ourselves a big deal and being really serious about it, wanting it to be like that forever. The gloriousness becomes tinged by craving and addiction. On the other hand, wretchedness–life’s painful aspect–softens us up considerably. Knowing pain is a very important ingredient of being there for another person. When you are feeling a lot of grief, you can look right into somebody’s eyes because you feel you haven’t got anything to lose–you’re just there. The wretchedness humbles us and softens us, but if we were only wretched, we would all just go down the tubes. We’d be so depressed, discouraged, and hopeless that we wouldn’t have enough energy to eat an apple. Gloriousness and wretchedness need each other. One inspires us, the other softens us. They go together.”
― Pema Chödrön, Start Where You Are: A Guide to Compassionate Living
