What Can Be Said?

What words are the right ones in the wake of yesterday's tragedy?

Even in our faith that the free will God provides creates as much space for disaster by human hands as it does beauty, how many of us wish all that we know could be suspended so that tragedy could be undone?

Or better yet, prevented?

Because if we are the only ones who could have or should have been able to stop this from happening, what have we done wrong? What do we continue to do wrong?

Improper gun control. Insufficient services for the mentally ill. Once again we'll climb aboard that tired carousel wobbling around and around and around as we come at this thing politically and intellectually, compromised by the heat of our emotions until we're made numb or nauseated.

I can't lobby and I'm not a pundit. I'm an unskilled political thinker and have nothing new to add, beyond a desperate prayer that we somehow make the complex shifts in all those arenas that need them in order to prevent this from happening yet again.

Here's what I do think. To the question of "Where was God?" I think the answer is "He was there." And is here, now. He's gifted us with the sometimes terrible gift of minds of our own. Somewhat confusingly, at least for pilgrims at my stage of spiritual journey, He's also promised ready guidance and relevance and revelation through prayer, our interactions with each other, and through Scripture.

It's confusing because that promise of access can ring so hollow at times like this. 20 sets of grieving parents seems a lot like "Access Denied."

Immediately after my surgery, which while not a tragedy was in many ways a definite personal crisis, for about 48 hours I was in a tunnel of pain that narcotics couldn't really touch. I was outside myself in my desire to make it stop, completely at its mercy and stripped down to the animal part of myself. I pulled God closer and shoved Him away over and over again because that's all I could do.

I asked Mr. Milkweed to read Psalm 22 over and over again.

This is the part I was hearing:

"My God, my God, why have you abandoned me?
Why so far from my call for help,
from my cries of anguish?
My God, I call by day, but you do not answer;
by night, but I have no relief."

This is the part I ignored:

"Yet you are enthroned as the Holy One;
you are the glory of Israel.
In you our fathers trusted;
they trusted and you rescued them.
To you they cried out and they escaped;
in you they trusted and were not disappointed."

It's called the Psalm of the Cross for the obvious reason that Jesus himself spoke the first line in His own suffering. Jesus himself wondered aloud where the hell his Father was.

That, for me, is the reason I was eventually able to turn back towards the core of the Psalm, which was a core strong enough to withstand my little brush with despair, because ultimately I found this to be true:

"For he has not spurned or disdained
the misery of this poor wretch,
Did not turn away from me,
but heard me when I cried out."

But, see, that was just surgery. That, compared to what happened in that school yesterday, was nothing. Nothing at all. I have hope that those words will eventually be the words of all who grieve, but all that comes to mind today is the Kyrie eleison, which is this prayer-- just these three words:

Lord, have mercy.

I pray that God will be with those that mourn in every stage of that mourning, and that eventually some comfort may be found. That mercy may be felt.

Lord, have mercy.