April 18, 2007

  • Condolences to the VA Tech Community

    On Monday, my wife and I were mostly traveling.  We woke up and somehow managed to drive without the radio on, a rare thing, and then spent the day flying.  At 10:00 PM, we landed and when we got in the car turned on the radio to hear the terrible news coming out of Blacksburg, VA.  Somehow none of it made sense and we drove in stunned silence back home.

    When the Columbine shooting happened, I had come home for a midday break before heading back to do some other work.  I turned on the TV just as events were beginning to unfold.  As a person who worked with high school students, I have to admit that I was immobolized that day by what I saw.  I wanted to call in and just quit and go and do something else.  It was that deep hurting feeling that something awful happened that should not ever happen and that I did not see how I could minister or serve youth for whom this was a frightening possibility.  It hit home because I spent many a lunch period sitting with students in their school hallways and know how an event like this can create a sense of fear among people.

    But what I found was that the youth I knew pulled together, prayed a lot, and came out more resilient than I could have expected.  The immediacy of what happened then did not have the same accelerated informational distribution that this insane tragedy on Monday did.  There was no IMing or Bloging or My Space or Facebook discussion for this where people could process what happened. 

    I know that this week many higher education people may be feeling as I did.  But there is hope.  For now we need to grieve.  We need to find ways to support the many people impacted by this tragedy.  But we also need to look within and discover how we can work to create a world where a sense of community and belonging can be present for all people even when they are radically different.  In all the stories we have heard so far, I keep wondering how many times it would have taken to reach out to someone like this young troubled man before something could have been avoided altogether.  We will never know for this person, but for all the students and next door neighbors we shun or ignore, perhaps this can be a reminder to connect or reconnect to them and be reminded that though we may have our differences, we are all part of the same human family.