God, life

An outside tragedy strikes our busy lives here in NE Ohio–spring is still around the corner

The urgencies of life all keep going on these months, almost 3 months since I posted last, my Christmas newsletter.  School is in full swing for me and the kids, and we are doing fine.  The usual chaos of trying to get the house cleaned (or not) and cooking, studying, playing, having outings, and planning the quarterly work trip with Rog keeps us all busy.  Progressing one step at a time.

When a young boy decided to take a gun to school in nearby Chardon, Ohio, it was a moment of reflection, horror, questioning, sadness, shock, and many other emotions.  Three boys died, the last of which was buried 10 minutes away in northern Chardon yesterday.  The barrage of beautiful black and red ribbons has been everywhere, and I’ve even worn a red headband for a week now myself.  What a tragedy, and I pray and have prayed for the victims families, friends, and the boy who shot them, and his family. 

Of course something like this makes you hug your own children and say, thank God it wasn’t us, it wasn’t our children.  You hug them many more times a day than usual, and yell at them less than usual.  And you wonder what the purpose was.  We have seen a tremendous outpouring of love, support, and offers of prayers to our immediate neighbors to the south of us, and perhaps it was that love after tragedy that was supposed to be a kind of lesson.  I’m not sure.  As we all continue to heal, spring is at our doorstep, with tulips and daffodils beginning to poke their heads out here and in other places.  Everything becomes normal again, though of course it really doesn’t for the families touched.

In the education and democracy class I’m taking, we have had some discussion about how these events could somehow be addressed at school.  I don’t know, really, what else they can do.  Bullying prevention starts in elementary school.  But yet it continues.  And then we don’t even know for sure, was this boy bullied?  That has never been confirmed.

Nothing else to say, really.  My prayers continue.

 

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