Jon Stewart summed up my feelings when he started his show last night speechless, laughless and in doubt about the place of comedy and then went on to crack a joke about how he was simply going to repress it all and act like it didn't happen. While eating lunch today - not at the Diner but at the little Greek gyro stand in the parking lot of Trader Joe's on Long Beach Road - some guys at the counter asked to change the channel from MSNBC to the Food Network. They couldn't handle any more of the shooting and Paula Dean was total comfort.
It's hard to doubt the existence of evil when a young English major turns from writing about the darkness inside to acting out that darkness by spreading death around the campus. And that what seems so tragic here is but a daily occurance in the neighborhoods of Iraq. Paula Dean smother me in your southern charm and help me forget.
A note in my email box this afternoon from Linda Valentine, the Executive Director of the Presbyterian Church (USA) General Assembly Council reminded me that for Christians repression is not an option. We serve a God who on the cross stood up to evil and defeated it. We hold in our tradition the Gospel of peace, the gospel of light. We are called not to repression but to acknowledgement and action. Elder Valentine informed me that a special response team from Presbyterian Disaster Assistance is on its way to Virginia Tech to help console and council. Local ministers and laity are also responding.
Rev. Valentine also called us to prayer - prayer for the families, prayer for our brothers and sisters in Christ who are facing the evil of that day head on, prayer for our society and our world.
An elder at Community Presbyterian recently mentioned to me that we're not praying enough for Iraq in church. That elder was correct. I'd pulled the covers over my head, I'd been repressing and when we repress we can't pray. So I call myself and all who read this to a ministry of prayer - to acknowledge evil and batter it to a stand still with our prayers.
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We should also be sure to pray for the family of the young man who felt such darkness.
Question: Is the rampage by marines in Iraq, in which they arbitrarily killed 24 totally innocent men women and children significantly different from the "enormity" at Virginia Tech? Or is it just farther away?
Any deaths of innocents should have a sense of enormity for us. Perhaps what strikes us as so terrible about this week's events at Virginia Tech is that college is supposed to be a safe place. It's not a war zone or prone to terrorism. We've gotten used to hearing about deaths in Iraq--whether caused by our own Marines or some extremist with a bomb. It's terrible--that it's happening so many places, and that we've become so passive.
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