In Honor of Jesse Lewis: Love Is a Choice
This post is dedicated to Jesse Lewis and all the children of Sandy Hook and their families.
This week my world was rocked and stretched by Scarlett Lewis, the mother of Jesse Lewis, one of the children who died in the Sandy Hook shooting in 2012. After the Sandy Hook shooting, a media personality used his platform to personally profit by spreading the conspiracy theory that the Sandy Hook mass shooting was a staged event, the children and families actors. For years he has told the world that these children never existed. Moreover, the families of Sandy Hook victims have suffered harassment and threatening behavior in the years since the shooting by people who believe his lies, adding to the immense grief from the loss of their children.
Ms. Lewis got to face the person responsible for spreading the lies and instigating violence against her family and others as she testified this week in a defamation suit against him. She was able to show him a video of her son running in a field, telling him that her son existed.
As compelling and filled with grace as her court room testimony was, the interviews afterward moved me even more. About the person who used his media platform to profit from spreading the lies, she said, “I don't think that he has a lot of love in his life. I don't think he's a very happy person,” and “I know that hurt people hurt people, and the amount of hurt that he's caused, I think is reflective of the amount of pain that he's in and I just felt a tremendous amount of compassion well up in me and I was fighting back tears.” She conclude, “In the end love is a choice.”
Her grace serves as a shining reminder that compassion is more possible than we often believe it is and, equally importantly, that compassion for others is compassion for ourselves. Our ability to offer compassion to others can allow us to heal. I couldn’t help but wonder, “If Scarlett Lewis can feel compassion for someone who has behaved so cruelly toward her and others, then how might I be able to stretch, and to whom might I be able to offer compassion? And how might that help me heal?"
Compassion requires courage and vulnerability - and it takes practice. Compassion meditation can help us build a habit of compassion so that it becomes more like a natural reflex. For more information on compassion meditation see the featured meditations below. This week I’m channeling Scarlett Lewis in my meditation practice, exploring pushing out the edges bit by bit.
For more information on Jesse Lewis, check out the Jesse Lewis Choose Love Movement.
May we all be free from suffering, knowing that we are loved, cared for and supported,
Your CMP family
