By ROD WALTON Staff Writer on Dec 17, 2012, at 1:41 PM Updated on 12/17 at 1:41 PM
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I dropped my youngest daughter off at school this morning without a thought about that awful moment only three days ago in Connecticut. Certainly parents everywhere harbored deeper fears than my absent mindedness. What those parents feel like in Newtown I cannot even begin to comprehend and hope I never do.
Something like this leaves me at a loss. Heartbreak, for sure, but also a widening gap to explain what’s goes on in the hearts of men. And I am singling out men, because by my amateur calculation nearly all of these horrific events are perpetrated by relatively young, white men. They more often than not are middle-class if not upper middle-class. And we only recognize the warning signals in tragic retrospect.
I can’t get political about this and don’t care to listen to anyone who does. Gun control may offer one answer, but then Timothy McVeigh only needed fertilizer and fuel, a methodology we also didn’t understand until after the fact.
I don’t even know how to talk to my children about this event. Our pastor, Jason Petermann, delivered an emotional response Sunday, reminding us that tragedy has always been part of the human experience. King Herod ordered the deaths of a generation of Bethlehem babies in a vain attempt to finish off the promised King of the Jews he feared, never dreaming that Christ came not as a military conqueror but as a healer and spiritual balm to the wounds of a fallen world, according to Biblical scripture.
So how do we help to heal those so deeply disconnected, hurting and maybe even angry in our society? Your advice is probably as good as mine, but here’s where I’d start: look people in the eye with respect, no matter their rank in life; encourage all those you can, within reason and without coming off like a sap head.
And give of yourself, as much and as often as you can, in finance, fun and friendship, to paraphrase John Wesley. Politicians often talk about those international borders to the north and south, but what about the barriers in our own churches, neighborhoods and, yes, classrooms.
I should mention that neither of my secondary school-aged children even mentioned the tragedy at Shady Hook School to me this morning, either. They have grown up hearing about this kind of thing every now and again. Is it just part of life now that people die without cause or warning? Well, yes it is. They accept that and maybe never wonder when it was otherwise.
The Monday after Friday’s horror was probably the safest day of the school year. Millions of parents dropped off millions of bright-eyed, beautiful children while police cars idled nearby. Many neighbors living just across many streets kept wary vigils over that precious cargo called childhood. We suddenly are all neighbors again.
But what about tomorrow and the day after that? This young man who did this thing, and others who threatened it elsewhere, are somebody’s children. I look at mine and know just how good they are, how loving and giving, but what if something went wrong in the mechanism of the brain? Would we recognize the mental pain and spiritual derailment in time?
I’m almost sure that young man’s father is asking himself the same questions right now and perhaps forevermore. Maybe he’s wondering if one more hug, one more phone call, one more “I love you” and maybe one more father-son weekend would have cleared up the smudges in the boy’s dark soul.
So where do we go from here, once again? Politicians cannot answer this, pastors can only offer condolences and confidence of a better world beyond. All I can do is go home and hug, love and plan some daddy-daughter or father-son time, let them know their lives matter more than my own. Correct them compassionately when I have to. I will try not to speak of unspeakables but instead sing of mundane glories simply by trying to be there for them as often as I can.
And keep on driving them to their school every day. I have no other choice.
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