When we were in Baños, Ecuador some years ago, we went into a small church where one wall was filled with candles that people had lit for loved ones who had passed on. We lit candles for both of my parents, for Rob’s dad, and for friends we had lost over the years. The idea, at least in my mind, is that the illumination helps the departed make their way through the afterlife. It’s a beacon of hope, a message from the living to the dead that they are not forgotten. It’s a statement of belief that the power of light is greater than the power of darkness.
Over the years, I have grown into the habit of lighting candles not only for people who have passed but for pets – my own and those of friends. If I had 26 candles, I would light them all, one for each child and adult who lost their lives in Connecticut. Instead, I lit my big Yankee candle. Interestingly, it shows geese flying across the face of a full moon and is called Moon on Their Wings, a rather apt phrase for the loss of 20 innocent children and 6 adults, all women.
New details about the massacre are emerging, including the fact that the shooter’s mother didn’t work at the elementary school, as previously reported, and that she was an avid gun collector. She used to take both her sons to the shooting range. No motive has yet been found for why Adam Lanza did what he did. But at this point, his motive seems irrelevant. What’s done is done.
And beyond motives and details, the fact remains that a small, tightly knit community has suffered irreparable loss and tragedy.
I can’t begin to comprehend how any parent copes with the loss of a child. I can’t begin to understand what the families of these youngsters, all between the ages of six and seven, are going through. I don’t understand how anyone can heal from something like this. The Christmas holidays will be forever tainted for their families. Rob and I were talking today about how we hoped there were helpers on the other side who were immediately there for these kids when they died.
“That’s the work the Fids is probably doing,” he said.
The Fids is a nickname for our friend Richard Demian, a psychic with whom we first connected when he wrote Rob a fan letter about his divination book, The Rainbow Oracle. Fids straddled two worlds – that of the living and of the dead – and the last time we saw him was in Central Park, near the Imagine tribute to John Lennon.
Not long afterward, Fids died suddenly of a heart attack. He was in his early forties. Helping children to cross over is something Fids would do.
Robert Monroe, author of Journeys Out of the Body and several other books, and the visionary who started the Monroe Institute in Virginia, wrote movingly of one OBE he had where he found himself next to a young man who had just been hit by a car. The young man was standing over his dead body, confused and scared. Monroe offered to help him get to wherever he was supposed to be, took his hand, and they began moving away from his body. It’s how I imagine Fids and other helpers in the afterlife dealing with these young children as they passed.
The problem for us, the living, is that none of us know for sure what’s true or not true about what happens when we die. We have beliefs that tell us one thing or another, we have convictions. But all we actually know for sure is that death is inevitable. Yet, if death is a state of transition, simply a different form of consciousness, then perhaps if we in the virtual world create a circle of light around these children and the adults who died in this travesty, they will see the illumination.
And because light is more powerful than darkness, because light exposes darkness and strips away its secrets, maybe this horror will prove to be the tipping point for gun violence in America. Our candle is lit. Please join us.
beautifully written and very moving post – and OMGosh, the link to the mom – chills!
After 2 suicides in my community last week in which I knew the husband and my daughter knew both, I meditated deeply on what was going on.
I was told it was their choice, but, I was then told that soon other groups (notice it is plural) would be “leaving” and that these souls planned it and would remember and so travel on together.
I asked if others would be helping to guide them and was told that they wouldn’t need guidance as they were already aware and so would go immediately to the light with no fear or confusion.
I still sobbed on Friday but especially for the families left behind. I still feel confused, I’m still asking what is going on?
I love your candle and will do likewise.
One last thing, has anyone else noticed that we had Hurricane SANDY and now a shooting at SANDY Hook Elementary? Also, both are in close proximity to each other? Newtown CT is just across the LI Sound?
This sandy synch escaped me! How sad about these suicides.
You know, I think the issue is not about so and so’s mental illness, the issue should be about our collective mental illness. In the past 6 months alone we’ve had a massacre in Colorado, the destruction of a Sikh temple in Wisconsin, and now this, all at the hands of mentally unbalanced young men. In the UK in 1996 a first grade class was mowed down by a gunman who also took his life, and their gun laws changed. But not here. We’ll passively allow this to go on, again and again, as if it was just an unfortunate thing, always surprised, while any homocidal maniac can go to the corner store and buy a weapon of mass destruction. Because that’s his right in a “free society”. Too bad if he did his acting out in your town.
Now that I call insanity.
In 2011 our beloved Gabrielle Giffords was shot, ending her career but fortunately not her life (although it did take the lives of 6 people, including a little girl). The President came and made a beautiful speech. But nothing changed. He may need to come up with a stock speech, which he can memorize for such occasions.
Here’s what one of my heroes, Bill Moyers, had to say:
“we have become so gun loving, so blasé about home-grown violence that in my lifetime alone, far more Americans have been casualties of domestic gunfire than have died in all our wars combined. In Arizona last year, just days after the Gabby Giffords shooting, sales of the weapon used in the slaughter – a 9 millimeter Glock semi-automatic pistol – doubled.
We are fooling ourselves. That the law could allow an inflamed lunatic to easily acquire murderous weapons and not expect murderous consequences. Fooling ourselves that the second amendment’s guarantee of a “well-regulated militia” be construed as a God-given right to purchase and own just about any weapon of destruction you like. That’s a license for murder and mayhem and it’s a great fraud that has entered our history.
There’s a video of which I’d like to remind you. You can see it on YouTube. In it, Adam Gadahn, an American born member of al Qaeda, the first U.S. citizen charged with treason since 1952, urges terrorists to carry out attacks on the United States. Right before your eyes he says: “America is absolutely awash with easily obtainable firearms. You can go down to a gun show at the local convention center and come away with a fully automatic assault rifle, without a background check, and most likely, without having to show an identification card. So what are you waiting for?”
I’m in complete agreement on the mental illness. I’ve got a link to a story written by a mother of a mentally ill son. It’s chilling. I’ll link it here after I get it.
This is a very interesting take on this subject:
https://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/12/16/i-am-adam-lanzas-mother-mental-illness-conversation_n_2311009.html
Nancy already posted it. Chilling.
Jim and I just posted this excerpt from a documentary he and I produced almost 20 years ago because it’s very relevant in the wake of this tragedy. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1P-GcYk675c
Thanks for the link,Adelita. Can’t wait to see it.
I’m still in shock. This is the part of CT I am from and still have family and friends there. Friends of friends and relatives at that school…
I forgot you were from connecticut!
Yep. My Dad’s house was in Newtown, on the Monroe border. Too close to home. We have close connections to some of the victims, still reeling.
Didn’t Realize it was the same town, Melissa.
My first reaction was to call on dreamers to open channels for any opportunity to assist. I had a powerful dream I’m working with that I won’t discuss, but that says, yes, this is a good thing to do. Fid, I’m sure is helping from the other side, but each of us can keep our hearts full of their presence, send them love and be open in our dreaming and meditations for the opportunity to help. And we can organize to ban assault weapons, at the very least!
I join you in light and love. I too hope that Fids and others are there, helping those confused souls to pass over. Thank you for this wonderful post.
Will light a candle.
This has shocked the world and through it’s awfulness perhaps, as you indicate, may prove to be a tipping point for good.
I have kept one lit all day today. May these sweet little angels find their way home.
I read somewhere of a person who was being regressed to a lifetime during the holocaust. She said she felt very sorry for the souls that were playing the parts of the Nazi prison guards. When asked why she would feel sorry for them, she said because they gave up so much to play that role so that everyone could learn the lessons planned before they incarnated.
I’ve thought about that today, because I just cannot fathom why anyone would kill a class of babies and their teachers and administrators. Guns are a problem in this country and automatic weapons need to be addressed, but more importantly we have something to learn about mental illness, lonliness, isolation, violence in our children’s games, movies, and television shows. A systematic desentization of our children’s basic goodness that begins way too early. There are abundant lessons here.
I wonder if that woman would have bought guns if she knew that her son would use them to take her life and that of 20 Kindergarteners and 6 teachers. When I learned that detail, the phrase “live by the sword, die by the sword” came to mind. I believe that she bears some responsibility for what happened. If she knew her son Adam had mental health or personality disorder issues, introducing him to guns and teaching him how to use it was the worst thing she could’ve ever done for him. It’s sickening. I wonder if her soul is horrified to learn in the afterlife what her actions have caused for other people.
I saw a movie
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZLRgAe2jLaw
last year called
“We Need to Talk About Kevin”
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1242460/
and it seems eerily similar to this massacre.
Did this guy watch this movie and thought what a great idea?
I wonder. I’m watching this memorial. It’s unbearably sad.
Obama’s speech at this memorial service was strong, compassionate. Perhaps now assault weapons will be banned. It would be a great start.