I’ve started this post fifty times in the last day or so. As I start writing, I still don’t know where it will end. That’s because I often write to discover rather than writing to report. And because the story has been changing constantly.

That’s the way of the news and our responses to the pool of facts that constantly changes. Every report gives a new detail that shifts the story, and the implications. We move from blaming whoever let the shooter in, to blaming one side or the other about gun control, to blaming one side or the other regarding mental illness, to blaming one side or the other in twenty other categories.

And now, because we couldn’t keep our clocks from turning, it’s Monday and hundreds of thousands of teachers are facing millions of children who were tentatively released by millions more parents.

And I am facing you, on the other side of this screen.

And I have to confess to you that although I could do nothing about what happened in Newtown, I bear responsibility to do everything I can do in while touching your life and in fulfilling my leadership and teaching responsibilities. And I confess that I fall short.

I don’t remember that there is evil.

That I have the capacity to hate, which is the starting point of violence.

That Jesus put on flesh and walked around looking into faces like yours and mine and our children and his enemies.

That I waste time on worry, reputation, and hesitation that could be invested in listening, encouraging, helping, and acting.

That I don’t have to be the savior, but I know one that is qualified.

That children are valuable, not for what they can do, but because they are.

And that children anywhere dying hurts everyone.