No. 66 :: This I Believe

I cannot stop listening to this song.

"Changes Come"

Over the Rhine

Changes come,
turn my world around.
Changes come,
turn my world around. 

I have my father's hands;
I have my mother's tongue.
I look for redemption in everyone. 

I want to wear your ring;
I have a song to sing.
It ain't over, babe,
in fact, it's just begun. 

Changes come,
turn my world around.
Changes come,
bring the whole thing down. 

I want to have our baby;
some days I think that maybe
this whole world's too f----d up for any firstborn son. 

There is all this untouched beauty,
the light, the dark both running through me.
Is there still redemption for anyone? 

Changes come,
turn my world around.
Changes come,
bring the whole thing down. 

Jesus come,
turn this world around.
Jesus come,
bring the whole thing down.

[edited to add the jump]

We can respond to tragedy in many ways.  I won't list them, because I don't need to.  Let's just focus on two ways that I see people reacting: pointing fingers and blaming or balking at the horror and grasping the hands (literally or figuratively) of the hurting and standing together.

Pointing fingers and blaming is a reaction of multiple faces.  Some are looking at society and picking out specific issues--often ones of political significance--and saying that if we just did x, y, or z, this wouldn't have happened/wouldn't happen again.  If we just had better gun control, this wouldn't have happened.  If we just had less gun control, this wouldn't have happend.  If we hadn't banned prayer in schools (which, by the way, is not true), then this wouldn't have happened.  Or, people of faith in this country are too inactive, too complacent.  And so on.

Don't get me wrong here: I am a Christian.  I am not going to deny that many people of faith are too complacent with too many things that are wrong in this world.  But it's not the political things that I find wrong; it's things like the number of people that suffer, how many children don't have enough to eat, how many men and women are trafficked, how many of us are lonely or hurting or brokenhearted.  And I find it wrong that on the whole, media and other outlets will focus more on what motivated a man to make such a horrible decision than we will on how we can best serve the victims.

But we can also do this: put aside our political beliefs and resist the urge to exploit this awfulness for a political purpose.  We can stop saying that our hearts are with those who lost loved ones as a preface to stating our opinion and simply leave it at that: our hearts are with those who lost someone.  They are with everyone, everywhere who has lost someone.  We all have or someday will hurt and grieve, and so we can take your hand with empathy.  We don't know what it is you suffer, but we know that suffering aches and so we ache for you.  And those of you who lost your lives, we will remember you.

You can read the names of those who lost their lives here.  They are the ones we need to remember.  Let's learn about the man's motivation, sure, so that maybe something in the future can be prevented--but let us focus on remembering the teachers and children who died.  Let us make sure they are the heroes of this story, the names you cannot forget.

There are so many other things I want to say--things about how most people with autism spectrum disorders are not violent, how I want to scream at this awfulness, how much I want people to stop tossing their opinions about and be kind and decent--but I don't wish to enter that debate.  It's more than I can handle.  I have said my piece.

And a quick note: I don't have a ton of readers and don't expect many comments.  However, if there are comments that are overly negative, judgmental, or hateful, I will delete them.  They have no place on this blog.  Or anywhere.

So much about writing and publishing this post scares me.  So please, please--be kind.


*EDIT
After a few months of being a substitute assistant in a school for kids with multiple disabilities, these beliefs have deepened.*