When I was a child in Oklahoma, we had tornado drills in case disaster struck. We would line up in the hall facing the wall, crouch on our knees, tuck our heads and lace our fingers over the back of our necks for protection from flying glass

After a few bad storms, I learned to listen around me. The sky would take a particularly color and the air, a certain smell. Something ineffable would sound over the land and we could feel if the weather was going to turn bad.

Now I live 750 miles and a full generation away from there.  My kids have drills in school, but they talk about active shooter drills. They talk about hiding and fighting back.

Between the political rhetoric and technical advances in weapons of war, the air has changed.

Seventeen more kids were murdered in their high school yesterday. A disaster, surely, but one of our making.

There is, however, hope here.

Let us be the force that changes the wind, sets the trees upright, calms the storm.

Pray with your heart and work with your hands. Vote against those who would militarize us, who would have us live afraid. If any politician says that there is nothing he or she can do, help them move onto other work and elect someone with more vision and more courage.

Talk to each other; listen deeply. Bring your creative souls to service of a deeper peace.

It is time we rise from kneeling by the wall and turn towards the work to be done.