The world needs more acceptance and compassion

Why does it take a tragedy, such the Newtown, Conn. shootings, to suddenly cause us personally and as a nation to put aside prejudices and the many forms of often angry judgments of others and then immediately have a great outpouring of love, total acceptance, and compassion?

Is not this same love, acceptance and compassion for others available from within me as I go about my normal daily activities; look into the eyes of those who look so different from me in dress, color, and habits; or get triggered with points of view so different from mine on religious, political, and social issues?

How would the great and historic spiritual teachers advise us today, if they were able to get our attention, about living life on earth with attitudes based upon love, acceptance, and having compassion and understanding for one another?

This only comes to my mind because I firmly believe that if there is anything to glean, positively, from events such as in Sandy Hook Elementary School it has to include the willingness for each of us to not only seriously look at our own attitudes and triggers, but talk about this with others, share in groups, write about it, read about it, have church services focusing on this, and make this one of our priorities in life.

I would like to think that all the spirits of those 20 little children in those two classrooms who were released from their bodies that day are rallying around a mighty call for expressing more love, acceptance, and compassion in the world today.

If so, by the way, it just might have resulted in that young 20-year-old shooter getting the help he desperately needed at the time he so desperately needed it.

Bob McClellan,

Polson