Tragedy at Virginia Tech

While I was sleeping Monday night, a disaster was unfolding on the other side of the world. By the time I clued in to what had happened at Virginia Tech, my Tuesday was half over. How strange that life could be going on as normal here, while in my heart-and-homeland, a young man's insane rage, his psychosis, was exploding, destroying. I keep looking at pictures of students grieving on campus, most wearing their hooded college sweatshirts, and can't help but imagine the faces of my own BSC classmates from over a decade ago had something like this happened to us. I remember our shock and sorrow when a fellow student died of cancer, our questions to God when another died in a car crash. We grieved. Found solace. Moved on. But this? This is a Columbine, a 9/11, a Katrina-type ripping into our reality. A time for screeching to a halt in horror.

But we don't stay there, do we? Inevitably, we wake up from the nightmarish moment when we learn of disaster. Then comes the processing, the analysis.

I am amazed at all of the talking, all of the words we have come up with in the wake of this disaster. How can we all have so much to say so soon? The same interviews babbling on websites and news shows, re-quoted in bits and pieces across the globe. Experts and non-experts weighing in on what must have driven Cho to methodically gun down his peers and teachers. Everyone nodding and sighing and talking and talking and talking about how the signs were clear, how no one heeded the warnings. Gun control debates. Security debates. All of us flailing around to find answers, coming up with explanations because we can't stand the unknown. If I, on the other side of the Pacific, can nearly exhaust myself scanning news stories, reading blogs, I can only imagine what it must be like in the States. And I cannot begin to imagine what it's like for those who are there in Blacksburg.

So for those who've been directly affected - faculty, students, family, police, you are wrapped in my prayers. I pray for peace and comfort to roll like a mighty wave into your hearts, healing the broken places, sustaining you, washing away the intense pain, anger, and fear. For the rest of us who feel the ripples of their pain, I pray for our hearts to open, really open, to the people around us, including the people in our own homes. I hope you'll join me in those prayers.