Just days ago, another school shooting took place, this time in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, striking at the peaceful heart of a town that virtually did not know crime. A 32-year-old milk-truck driver entered a quiet Amish school house and committed unspeakable acts. It appears that 10 young girls were shot execution style and 5 are confirmed dead; the others are in critical condition. It’s the third school shooting to happen nationwide within a week.
The Amish lead a simple life, an unplugged life. They move with the rhythm of the sun and the seasons. But for this community, the rhythm has been broken by the madness of our age.
What do we do in the face of such terror? I think of the children in that school who survived, trembling in that darkness, that place of terror. Though they've survived, still something of their childhood has been forever lost. They are wounded in a way few can understand; only grace can heal such pain. And I pray that it descends now with all tenderness and light.
What has happened in the minds of such men who can do such terrible things to the helpless and the innocent? The heart has been poisoned; as the heart of our culture has been numbed by so much senseless violence. Many of our movies glorify violence; television shows are increasingly pushing the envelope. How many times has the TV shown us stories of homicide, brutality, and torture, “entertaining” us with plot lines that delve into the minds of psychopathic killers? If this is what we drink in day after day on our couches after work, after a day of real encounters with the miracles around us, how can it not have a desensitizing effect? Soon we miss the miracle, and have left only a mass of blurred faces in our daily walk.
Digging up death is sometimes the full-time work of media personnel. But when these real events become the story lines for our “entertainment,” have we crossed a line?
I think we need to seek sanctuary. We need a retreat.
We need the soft rain to come, and the quiet cool of the evening to still us, heart and mind, to wash our souls clean. We too, need to be unplugged for awhile. To turn to the mountains again, like Francis, and empty ourselves of the baggage that our broken culture is pouring into our hearts.
It's the time of the year, as Halloween approaches, that more horror films are released. These “thrillers” are pounded out in teaser trailers that have so much adrenaline, gore and flashy sound-bytes that it is a wonder more heart attacks aren't happening in the theaters. Violence for the sake of violence.
Do we need this? Is it necessary for us to experience it? Does the experience cultivate a respect for life, or does it cheapen life?
Where do you go for sanctuary? Where is the place you can go where there is life, peace, stillness?
We must have this tonic of stillness for our bodies and our souls. We must have a sanctuary: a walk into the woods, a chapel on a quiet afternoon, morning coffee as the sun slowly lifts her head again. Then we can rise as well.
It starts with an attitude of stillness and listening, the leaning of the heart's ear toward the divine whisper.
It's been reported that some of the Amish families caught in the terror of this week's school shooting in Paradise, Pennsylvania, have had community meetings. They are asking the question — on the green grass of their land, in the cool of the evening, in the stillness — what can we do for the family of the man who killed our own? How can we support his wife and children?
This kind of compassion, this mind-boggling love is what is newsworthy. This kind of reaction to terror and death is heroic. It's born from stillness as this anonymous reflection describes:
Empty, yet full of power, it seems as nothing, but envelops everything. Silence: the roar of it deafens; shatters upon the soul in waves. One is not able to stand in its mystery. It scours like the ferocious whirling of the desert sand, laying waste all that lies before it. It reveals pain, loss, vulnerability, and weakness. The world tries to cover it, smother it with noise and activity. The world tries to silence the silence. But a few allow it to strip them, to let it reveal to them the beauty of its majesty. A beauty which is found in them also, deep within all, if only they would allow themselves to enter the white-hot furnace of silence. Therein much is revealed and all is made new.
© Copyright 2006 Catholic Exchange
Bill Donaghy is a lay evangelist who writes and speaks on topics of the Catholic Faith. He is a certified Theology of the Body speaker, and teaches Scripture in Malvern, PA. He and his wife Rebecca live in Lansdowne. Learn more about his speaking ministry and semi-serious blog at www.missionmoment.org.
