Mourning for Virginia Tech and All Students

Submitted by Audrey deCoursey on April 25, 2007 - 5:06am.

Much can and should be said about the sadness of the violence at Virginia Polytechnic Institute in Blacksburg. . ., but what I would say is to share my sadness and fear about my own mortality as a student. Schools should be safe places, as our Commander in Chief stated this week. Many/most/all places on Earth should be.

But schools fill a particular purpose in society, which makes the murders there all the harder to bear. Schools are the places where we go to develop ourselves in order to go into the world, to make a difference in our futures, and the students killed this week never got that chance. Their lives ended while they were just learning who they were to be in the world, before they got to use all they had been learning to become.

The lives of these victims, however long or short, were full, and blessings to the world. And death is not, inherently, evil; in fact, death should be a blessed part of the experience of life. But when death is perverted to take away the blessings of life, before their time, be it in war or in campus massacres, it is our Christian and human duty to rage against this violence. And rage starts with the deep knowing of mind-and-heart-felt mourning.

Originally posted at Audrey's blog: Brethren Priestess Online.

» read more | Audrey deCoursey's blog | add new comment

Strengthening the progressive Christian network for justice, compassion, & peace