I struggle not to be undone by the passage of time.  It’s been three weeks since the SPU shooting.  This past Easter marked the 15-year anniversary of the Columbine High shootings.  I wasn’t at the school, but I remember the eight-hour lockdown and then finding out “what happened” on the news (most of which we now know was inaccurate).  I remember it every time images from yet another school shooting scream across screens nationwide.  We know this has to stop.  We know this can’t go on.  In a very real way, we are all Columbine…becoming more so as time passes.  We also know there are no easy answers (sorry for the cliche) even when we refuse to ask the difficult questions. (more…)

Not to be confused with “everything happens for a reason,” the idea that everything has a season is actually a comfort to me in these days and weeks since the shooting at SPU.  It’s not that I think we should accept school shootings as inevitable by any means or that everything that happens occurs in the right time.  Surely, things happen out of season: lives are ended too soon; pain can linger too long; plants can root in the wrong soil.  But this must mean, then, that there is “right” soil.  The Teacher seems to say as much in Ecclesiastes 3:1-8: (more…)

It’s been two weeks.  In general, the faculty and staff at SPU have been truly heroic in their response to the community’s grief, mobilizing resources (among them is this one, written by a professor to a friend and classmate) and making themselves available.  The weekend after the shooting, which was the last weekend before finals, the student counseling center organized counselors and students in the counseling program to be on campus during the day.  The faculty have been extremely generous with deadlines and extensions even as we went ahead with finals. (more…)

It took a few days, but now, I’m mad.  I’m mad that tragedy has struck again.  I’m mad that the best God seems to be doing right now is staying with us in the tragedies, instead of, you know, STOPPING THEM.    Things are not okay.  But here’s the thing that bothers me the most (from the human side anyway).  It’s not that the whole world doesn’t stop for our grief.  It’s that what feels like the whole world took up the “latest” shooting as an example for their own points.  Less than 24 hours after SPU was violated by violence, people on both sides of the gun control debate had objectified the SPU community – MY community – as pawns in their agendas.  Whether or not good points were made is not what’s important right now. (more…)

It has already been a week since SPU joined the rapidly growing ranks of schools that have been attacked.  Summer break has mostly begun; graduation is these next few days for my school and after that, many people will be gone.  The campus that just last week was covered with family, solidarity, prayer, flowers, reaching out to one another, is already empty.  Desolate compared to what it was.  In Your Mercy, Lord, hear the prayer of the lonely, those still in need of family, solidarity, prayer, flowers, reaching out.  Bless those who are caring for others even as they themselves need care.  Lord, in Your mercy, use me, (heart)broken vessel that I am, how You will. (more…)

You’ve probably heard by now: at the school where I got my undergrad degree and where I’m currently in seminary, there was a shooting last Thursday.  Jon Meis, the student security guard at Otto Miller Hall who tackled the shooter while he was reloading, likely lowered the number of people who would have lost their lives; still, we lost one brother: freshman Paul Lee.  Two others, Sarah Williams and Thomas Fowler, were injured.  Even with the lockdown drills that we all know too well (which are themselves traumatizing, at least to me), my school was rocked and is still reeling.  Major props to assistant director of University Ministries Bob Zurinksy for stating outright during the prayer service the evening of the shooting that it may take some years or even a lifetime to heal.  I’m mad that this culture expects us to move on so quickly from grief. (more…)

As one who is alive to the devastation of our planet, the terrible things we do to each other, the hollow places of life and love, “thank you” is sometimes the hardest thing to say.  I don’t just mean to God  – as in, “thank you for this food, thank you for this day, thank you for life.”  I mean to my friends, when they show what I feel is heroic care for me at my most difficult.  Or to my husband, who honestly puts up with a lot from me as I try to work out my salvation with fear and trembling (and days when I don’t seem to be trying much at all).  “Thank you” is both what I was raised to say when someone does something nice (and thus often doesn’t feel like “enough” when someone does something really nice) and incredibly difficult to say when much seems bad and getting worse. (more…)

Many people are grappling with crippling anxiety or debilitating fear, either generalized or about something specific, and there is a lot to be afraid of, to be sure.  Anxiety is an awful, ravaging monster that can paralyze us, rob us of sleep and sap us of peace.  It is a real and active force that deserves a real and active response… “let go and let God” (or any similar phrase) does not, in my opinion, qualify. (more…)