There is a lot going on. The Pope. Politics.
I don’t want to forget, though, that a year ago today – right now – we were all watching in horror as unbelievable news starting coming out of Blacksburg, Virginia. And at the end of the day, 32 students and faculty were dead, along with one murderer who, inexplicably, gave himself over to whatever demons haunted him, took their lives in his hands…and then took their lives.
Pray for the dead, for their families and friends, and for all victims of such crimes. Pray for those tempted by darkness, as well.
(And not to put a boring personal spin on everything, new readers might not know that my second oldest son, a VT grad, at the time worked at the Burger King which is in the VT student center, and was in the building, which is very close to Norris Hall, when the shootings began. Naturally, the whole experience had a profound impact on him, as it did on the whole VT community.)
The Washington Post article that Get Religion linked to — I thought that was very good.
Sometimes I still feel that dread in April when the tornado came, or that grief at the time of year when my maternal grandfather died. So I really felt for that poor kid in the article.
The other thing I was glad to hear was that he was able to talk to Michael Bishop (the sf writer who’s the father of “Herr Bishop”, the German professor who was killed). There’s a lot of friend-of-a-friend and solidarity among the sf community, and we do worry about our own.
Nothing is going to be a magic wand that makes all the pain go away. But we have to look out for each other. That poor kid is in a lot of pain, but helping others and keeping on is the best thing he can do for himself right now.
Sorry to hear about the writer’s block. I thought you may enjoy this little snippet I picked up at Western Confucian by way of inspiration: even PapaRatzi had to learn the really hard way that God permits evil that good may come of it…
oops missing attribution
http://orientem.blogspot.com/2008/04/lebensunwertes-leben.html