little pictures...

i taught chapel this morning. considering the events surrounding yesterday's shooting at virginia tech, and the fact that the event has been well documented on the news, radio, and in newspapers, it seemed foolish to imagine that we would not say something about what happened during chapel. the middle school kids were easy to talk to, mostly. they are much easier to reason with, explain to, tell the truth to. even the lower school kids were mostly ok. one parent told my boss not to talk about it in chapel, because she and her husband had decided not to tell the child anything about what happened yesterday. i think there's probably a line between telling too much and not telling enough, but not telling at all is not an option, at least not in my world. geeze louise.

so i talked to them about the gospel lesson for today--how if you love the least of these, God calls you righteous. and we talked about how everyday, (it's cool as all hell, check it out at one.org)we have the chance to love the least of our brothers and sisters. we talked about how and who we love shapes how we live. and in the back of my head, i hoped that they could feel like they weren't totally powerless in the face of a kind of anger and rage that can take all that away in a heartbeat.

it is a hard thing to tell children that they are safe, loved, make a difference, ect., in the face of such senseless anger and brutality. and i keep remembering to myself that God was in those classrooms, those dorm rooms, those operating rooms, those phone calls, those last moments. God was there. and God was sad. and i have to remind myself that the young man who did all this, and took his own life, as well, was someone's baby, too. and what happened to him? what could make someone do such a thing? life is such a precious, precious gift, and it's not ours to take away. it's ours to love, and conserve, and honor, right? what the hell are we doing to each other? God was there. God is here. God save us, every one.

somedays, i wonder if people don't get loved enough. i think sometimes, they don't. we live in a broken and dying world, and it's so freaking hard to come to terms with that. there are no easy answers. and this morning, staring out at those clean, shiny, precious little faces, who dare to believe that because i am taller than they are, that i have something to say to make sense of the hard things. so we tell them that it's all going to be ok, even on days when we're not sure it's all going to be ok. we try our best to keep them safe, to say and prove to them that love does make a difference in the world, and God helping us, that will turn out to be true and real.

mil besos--rmg