Newtown

Sometimes the world is just too sad. This Friday, just as I was about to close my computer and head out the door to a Christmas party for the kids and tutors involved in the after-school tutoring program that I manage, I saw the news about the elementary school shooting in Newtown, Connecticut. I saw the headlines, and a few photos: women with their mouths open, frozen in a scream; police looking bewildered; children in lines in a parking lot... I shut my computer, knowing I would be late if I didn’t, and left for the party.

 

All afternoon, I played games with precious elementary-aged children, frosted cookies with them, made Christmas cards for their tutors, and refused to think about Connecticut or to try to fill in the blanks between the few facts I knew. What I did know was utterly incompatible with the joy, with the pure LIFE  all around me.

But of course, the story found me on the drive home. I listened to the radio and heard from someone who went to Sandy Hook Elementary, from a reporter at the scene with few details, from newscasters struggling to give the weather report without sounding ridiculous.

 

I understand. There are no words. There is nothing to say. There is only a deep sadness, unearthed by this specific event, but always there. It is the sense that the world is not as it should be. It is homesickness for a place that is in some ways so familiar and in some ways so foreign to us. It is a longing for perfect community with our neighbors and our God in a restored city, an utterly new town.

 

Prayer of Lament

 

O God, you are our help and strength,

our refuge in the time of trouble.

In you our ancestors trusted;

They trusted and you delivered them.

When we do not know how to pray as we ought,

your very Spirit intercedes for us

with sighs too deep for words.

We plead for the intercession now, Gracious One.

For desolation and destruction are in our streets,

and terror dances before us.

Our hearts faint; our knees tremble;

our bodies quake; all faces grow pale.

                                                    Our eyes are spent from weeping       

and our stomachs churn.

How long, O Lord, how long

must we endure this devastation?

How long will destruction lay waste at noonday?

Why does violence flourish

while peace is taken prisoner?

Rouse yourself! Do not cast us off in times of trouble.

Come to our help;

redeem us for the sake of your steadfast love.

For you are a gracious God

abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness.

By the power of the cross,

through which you redeemed the world,

bring to an end hostility

and establish justice in the gate.

For you will gather together your people into that place

where mourning and crying and pain

will be no more,

and tears will be wiped from every eye.

Hasten the day, O God of our salvation.

Accomplish it quickly! Amen.

 

From Let the Whole Church Say Amen! A Guide for Those Who Pray in Public by Laurence Hull Stookey, pp94-95 (Copyright 2001 by Abingdon Press)  

One Word of Truth

Photo by me of young girl's drawing in Rwanda

"In this cruel, dynamic, explosive world, on the brink of a dozen destructions, what is the place and role of the writer? We writers have no rockets to blast off, we do not even trundle the most insignificant auxiliary vehicle, we are indeed altogether despised by those who respect only material power... writers and artists can do something more [than maintain the lie with violence]: they can vanquish the lie... We must not seek excuses on the grounds that we lack weapons...we must go out into battle...One word of truth outweighs the whole world. And on such a fantastic breach of the law of conservation of mass and energy are based my own activities and my appeal to the writers of the world."

- Alexander Solzhenitsyn, One Word of Truth, 1970 Nobel Prize speech, quoted in Between Two Worlds, by John Stott.

Throwing away the bobby pin

“Let’s start something!” exclaimed a friend of mine over coffee.

Start something? I thought… I haven’t thought about starting something in ages. I work a combined 50 hours across three jobs on a light week, I’m still settling in to a new city, and I’m pretty committed to my eight hours of sleep per night. Life is trucking along, but in no way is anything new happening. It’s enough to keep up with the old!

At least that’s what I told myself.

Yet, here I am. Starting something.

I’ve been a writer for as long as I could physically write. My first journal was one of those small faux-leather bound books with gold lettering that said “My Diary” on the front and had a tiny gold lock that I could open with a tiny gold key, that is until I lost said tiny gold key. After that, any old bobby pin or paperclip did the trick. That first small book is filled with barely legible scribbling, that would likely be baffling even to the intrepid reader who endeavored to decipher the words.

I remember lying on my stomach on my bedroom carpet writing out my musings to my little book. Deep truths like, “I think I LOVE ANDREW!” came pouring from the depths of my young soul. I would close my diary, turn a paperclip in its gold lock and feel a strong sense of well-being. Yes, I have spoken truth. The world is okay with me today, I would think.

Now, not much has changed. My journals are more legible, yes, though perhaps not more coherent. I still lay on my stomach and write my heart out on good days and bad. I still am occasionally over-dramatic or miss the layered meaning of my own words. And I still experience writing as a deeply life-giving act.  

So starting this blog is, in one sense, nothing new. It is, however, opening up my writing to others and asking that this experience be somehow less solitary and more communal. It is throwing away my bobby pin and opening up my journal to whoever cares enough to read it.

Thank you for joining me. May you find something here that blesses you as much as it blesses me to write it.