From Staff Reports
On Wednesday, Dec. 14, Nonviolent Navarro, in partnership with Stand Up for Change Navarro County, will hold a Candlelight Vigil on West Collin Street for All Victims of Gun Violence. That day will mark the tenth anniversary of a very horrific event.
On the morning of Dec. 14, 2012, a twenty-year-old man shot and killed his mother in the house they shared in Newtown, Connecticut. He used one of the at least five guns and four of the at least sixteen hundred rounds of ammunition in their household. Then he drove to Sandy Hook Elementary School, which he had attended as a child. With a Bushmaster rifle, he shot dead six educators and twenty students between the ages of six and seven. With a Glock semi-automatic handgun, he killed himself.
The majority of citizens in our country favor policies that would help make our children and our communities safer. However, the focus of the vigil will not be advocacy for policy change. The focus that evening will be on grief for the almost unbearable loss that so many families and communities must continue to endure.
Out of the Sandy Hook massacre the Newtown Foundation was born. The Sandy Hook Promise was crafted by its members. A portion of that document reads:
This is a Promise. To truly honor the lives lost by turning our tragedy into a moment of transformation.
This is a Promise. We make to our precious children . . . because each child, every human life is filled with promise, and though we continue to be filled with unbearable pain we choose love, belief, and hope instead of anger . . .[and] to do everything in our power to be remembered not as the town filled with grief and victims; but as the place where real change began.
Our hearts are broken; Our spirit is not.
The Sandy Hook Promise illuminates a core principle of Nonviolence: Nonviolence is a commitment to take the anger and the fear we naturally feel in our hearts and allow them to be transformed into Love and Compassion.
So we invite everyone to join us that evening, not as political partisans, but rather as human beings, members of families, members of our community.
We will gather on 6 p.m., Wednesday, Dec. 14, at 6 p.m., located at 113 W. Collin Street, half a block west of the town
Christmas Tree. We will supply the candles.
For more information, contact Rev. Dr. John Blewitt at jblewitt@bellsouth.net or 225-223-1430.
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