This makes my heart hurt. My son is just shy of 10, and while I don’t worry every day, I do worry. I keep thinking what’s the root cause? Why are people picking up guns and shooting?

What are the wounds we aren’t healing? What are the expectations we aren’t meeting as a society that sets these people on a path to kill? I am not saying they aren’t 100% accountable for their terrible actions. But, I am saying there’s something else afoot. Resilient, wholehearted people don’t shoot other people in civil society. What are we missing? What can we do?

I don’t expect an answer, obviously. I just hate to read stories like yours (and to fear the story will be mine too) and feel so powerless to stop the next one or the next. It seems to me we haven’t found the root cause, and we must keep searching, and then have the courage to make changes, as individuals and as a community. I wish I knew the answer. I wish I had a clue.

The only answer I have for myself is a lyric from Kathy Trocoli’s song “ Go light your world.” The lyric is “ Carry your candle, run to the darkness.”