Yesterday the O-antiphons of Advent began. But mine started early, driving home last Friday on a snowy freeway, catching the afternoon news after a day of meetings. Oh God, no. Oh God, not again. Oh God, not children. So many words have been spilled since Friday, and yet I keep struggling to voice how deeply this news wounds. As a mother, of course. But deeper, as a person of faith who tries to make sense of God's ways, who wonders how we can respond in turn. It was the familiarity of Sandy Hook that shook me up. The day before the shooting, a school was bombed in Syria, killing sixteen, half of whom were women and children. But that tragedy was a mere blip on the evening news, the daily digest of the continued slaughter of the innocents. My husband mentioned it over dinner and I shook my head. "I can't handle Syria anymore. Too much. I can't handle it." But now, school heaped upon school, bodies heaped upon bodies, babies heaped upon babies, I keep thinking of Sandy Hook and I … [Read more...] about o come, be born in us
school shooting
the sheer aliveness of tonight
My children seemed even smaller today, even more fragile and fleeting. The whole day shifted, slanted towards helpless with the news from Newtown. Everything felt ugly and overwhelming and exhausting, like being punched in the chest, the core of my heart. What to say or do or think in the face of horror, of violence wrenched upon a corner of the world, so much like our quiet own, ripped inside out and left bleeding and broken and raw beyond recognition? The second I got home, I gathered my boys in my arms, smothered their hair with my kisses. Tried to breathe in the simple fact of their existence before they squirmed away. Before they went back to laughing, playing, whining, reading. Being. For the rest of the day I watched them with other eyes. I watched them from the corner of the kitchen over dinner. From the bedroom doorway during bathtime. From the top of the stairs while they giggled under the Christmas tree. I lingered on the normalcy of our night, the ordinary … [Read more...] about the sheer aliveness of tonight
