God, save us all

As the Father has loved me, so I have loved you; abide in my love. (John 15:9)

I have no desire to write today, but here I am. And I have no illusion that I have anything worth saying, but I come back here because something or someone within says, Write! So I do, hoping somewhere amid the writing I will find something within me—or something within will find me—and calm the restless sea of emotion that drags me into its depths.

I cannot escape the image of bullets tumbling and tearing through the bodies of nine and 10 year-olds in a Texas school because I have seen dead children killed in civil war and others simply left to die by the roadside. And I have looked into the vacant eyes of teens who saw schoolmates shot dead, realizing that they didn’t see me; their eyes were fixed on scenes they could not erase.

Nor can I escape the heaviness of hearing my own mother’s pain. Nearly 93, her body is worn down and wearing out so that there is little anyone can do to still the pain that some days chains her to her chair. The hunger to get-up-and-go, which drove her fast-forward all her life, torments and agitates her heart because she can no longer do what was once like breathing. Deep within, she feels not past 90 but someone much younger, someone who wants to tend her flowers, run the food pantry and be on every other committee at church.

My mother and the horror of a Texas grade school would seem to have nothing in common, except the obstinate reality of human suffering that sooner or later renders us mute and helpless, knowing there is nothing we can say or do that will make any difference.

Any attempt to make easy meaning of the suffering of aging—to say nothing of the unspeakable grief over the mutilated bodies of children—is sacrilege.  Our words cannot ease the pain, relieve the sadness or still the bitter wrongness of it all.

We are left to despair ... or to the faith that there is yet a Love that can redeem all that is not loving, all that is bitter and sad, mute and gray.

Confused, sad and angry, possessing neither answers nor any words to still my heart, I urge myself to cling to the Love I have known who knows me, who knows my mother, who knows those Texas children and even the tortured soul who ripped open the hearts of all who love them.

God save them all, I pray. Somehow. God save us all, especially from ourselves.

Days to come will bring thoughts and prayers, glib words and heartfelt sorrow. The futility of our tawdry politics will disgust and further divide the country. Hands will be wrung, ideologies will collide, and children will lay flowers at a school house door. Again.

But redemption, at least as much as human efforts afford, will be known only in the embrace of those undeterred by bitter tears, souls unafraid to step into the breach and stand speechless alongside inconsolable hearts.

Redemption comes the only way it ever can, by finding a way to translate suffering into love.

So we abide in love, or do our best trying, for that is where the One who is Love meets us ... and redemption begins.

David L. Miller