Tuesday, November 19, 2013

Words No Words

A student is killed in an ‘altercation’ with a security official on Liberty University’s campus.  Not so far away, a local politician is stabbed and his son is dead.

Details, salacious details, are sure to follow.

Analyses, over-the-counter diagnoses, pieties and impieties will be spoken.

Tear Drop Window, Monument
Valley - photo at Luminous Landscape
Here, in this now, before the storm following the storm of personal tragedy writ large, I sit and wonder with a  friend about all the little things . . . the little problems we call to mind to remind ourselves that our lives aren’t so bad . . . the little things that for some become the big things . . . mounting and mounting until the explosion comes – the small explosions of angry words and harsh judgments or the bigger ones . . . none of them can be taken back, can they?

The writer of that book was wrong I think – that book that told us not to sweat the small stuff and that it’s all small stuff – yeah – I think he might be wrong – I think it might all actually be big stuff.

I have no answers, only questions – and tears.

What do we do to keep the pressures from mounting?

How do we help each other not let the little things pile up?

What does it take to change a course that in hindsight can seem inevitable?

I wish I knew.

Lord, oh Lord, how I wish I knew.

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