This website has been on quite the hiatus, but I want to share with you what came from this father’s heart in the darkened hours after the news broke in Uvalde, Texas that a boy murdered 19 elementary school children and two teachers. I think it has become too easy to put such a tragedy behind us. To click the next link, watch the next show, listen to the next song. There’s something to be said for broken-heartedness, especially for fathers. To sit with those who grieve, if only in spirit, and weep with them.
Imagine all of us, the whole earth, grieving together, if only for a few hours. How fitting that would be, given the mess we’ve made here.
Here’s the opening to a short meditation I wrote on the children of Uvalde:
In the hours after Salvador kills you, all the earth falls silent. The birds nestle their young and quiet them, our dogs tuck their tails and hide beneath furniture, the winds collapse to the ground. Waves cease their rumbling. Currents sink into the depths. All the seas become as an open and sightless eye.
In our cities, people lose interest in their shopping. Drivers park their buses, conductors step down from their trains. We parents leave our factories and fields and white-walled offices. We come home to sit in our den chairs and ponder our trembling hands. We do not turn on the television news.
The good people at Slant Books were kind enough to post the meditation, if you’d like to read the rest. No matter what you do, hug your children today. Pray for the parents who cannot.