We have to do better.


This week finds me thinking a lot about parents and children and family and the bonds we form. How fragile they are, how easy they are to take for granted, how devastating it can be when that bond is broken, whether from death or separation or something worse. Yet it all starts with a moment like this one here.  A big surprise...Look at you! Where did you come from? Aren't you perfect? I'm gonna love you forever and ever!    And we do the best we can, don't we? It's the biggest job in the world, being a parent.
Being a child has its challenges, too.

This week, something awful happened in Arizona. A madman went off and blew half a dozen people out of the world. Somebody's grandfather, somebody's  husband, somebody's wife, somebody's children, somebody's child. And while important people stand around and try to pin blame, or dodge it,
the fact remains that there are now six holes in the world that will never be filled. I think of  a line in "Unforgiven" by David Webb Peeples... " It's a hell of a thing, killing a man. Take away all he's got and all he's ever gonna have." We have to do better. 

A couple of days ago, we were doing an Open Door  show, and at the end a boy came up to us, worrying his hands, and he said "What if something like ...that happened to you and you told your parents and it stopped... and a couple of days later it started again?" We have to do better.

We have to do better because the odds are already stacked against kids and the adults they're gonna grow into. It's all so fragile and fleeting and busy and easy to miss when you're right in the middle of it and life is blasting you from every angle. Can we slow it down? Can we try to pay attention? Could we be a little nicer? Can we say "yes" more often than we say "no"? Can we fill the moments we're standing in right now so that we leave finished and without a sense of "if only..."?
 I think we can.

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