Rise of the Guardians

The senseless violence at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown,Connecticut has left us all shaken. We find ourselves left with the same painful bewilderment that overcame us following the shootings in Tucson, Arizona and Aurora,Colorado and Nickel Mines, Pennsylvania and Oak Creek, Wisconsin and every other place that has been visited by these attacks. The incidents are on the international news, then the national, then the state, then the local as the evil creeps closer and closer to our back doors.

This sort of evil was characterized as "Pitch" in the holiday children's movie, The Rise of The Guardians. This animated villain attempts to take away children's beliefs in all things good. He attempts to take away their security and innocence. He attempts to take away their optimism and hope. He attempts to erase all that is good and replace it with darkness.

Enter the guardians. They include "The Sandman", "Tooth", "North", "Bunny" and "Jack Frost". Their very existence depends on protecting children. As should ours. Jack is initially resistent to being named a guardian thinking himself unworthy of this title and uneager to assume this enormous responsibility. Yet his innate guardian-self emerges and he partners with the one child whose light could not be dimmed ( "Jamie") and together they defeat "Pitch".

It is up to each of us to be guardians of our precious children. Be they our own children, our nieces and nephews, our grandchildren, our great-nieces and nephews, our neighbors, our students, our local young athletes or children we have never met in another area of our planet.

Banning the sale of assault weapons to protect these remarkable little lights sounds reasonable. Taking a close look at all gun control laws sounds like a plan. Increased funding for mental health is a positive step in any culture regardless of crime rate. We must think less about ourselves and our guns and our possessions and more about the children. We must rise up to be guardians in the most nonviolent loving ways we can imagine.

We must rise up and become guardians of peace.