mardi, avril 17, 2007

Accepting the unbelievable

I spent a few minutes tonight reading about the young women and men, the graduate students and teachers, murdered at Virginia Tech on Monday. Even in black and white, even knowing that they are dead, they glimmer with the loveliness of promise only partly fulfilled. I don't know if this group of students (valedictorians, dancers, military men) was above average for VT-they seem extraordinary to me. As the days go by, we will learn more about them, enough to make us grieve more deeply, never enough to make the slaughter something we can accept. How sad, and how typical of this nation, that the faces of the dead, and the heroes, were men of color, immigrants, and an elderly Romanian Jewish Holocaust survivor.

All we can pray tonight is ...please let us do something meaningful to stop this epidemic of violence in our cities and campuses. When do we finally understand that it is not enough to mourn the dead? We must protect the living.

Welcome the incandescent souls of the dead to your Kingdom, God. Shall we who still live accept that peace is only a real option for the life to come?

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