A voice mistaken for a wise man once said:
“Compassion is love turned painful”
Easy to love the children
Hard to love the shooter
Or so it would seem
Does awareness divide itself
Between the innocent and the darned?
How much evil would it take
To balance the life of even one child?
What do we tell the mother, the father?
That this is the show that they bought the ticket for?
That noone ever actually dies?
Do we say this to them now, in this hour of horror?
Tears. Yes. Tears, not words
A single tear is worth a thousand sonnets
Some mothers and fathers have heard the words
They do not need them now
Some mothers and fathers haven’t heard the words
They will not hear them for now
For them, it’s too early for the words
Heard them or not, for the now
Love
Patience, Presence
These are words to live by for anyone near to them
There will be pain in those eyes
The best that can be done is to not flinch from it
These are my words for this horrific now
This world is not permanent
This world is a sort of transit
It is never the same, ever changing
Noone gets to stay here forever
Well all must go home in the end
The seasons might trick us into assuming the endless nature of the cycle of death and rebirth
To us the sunny face of summer looks the same each year
It’s because we only see it from far away
No song lasts forever, and every song is the same before it begins and after it is over
Remember the children as they lived
Every song starts in silence, and fades back into the silence from which it sprung
The sweet melody and lyrics
The sunny smile, the tossled hair, the rosy cheeks, the love-bright eyes
These were the song while it played
Be here, now, and face the horror
But know that the end was only a single instant
Remember the song as it was when it was playing
Know that fear cannot touch that child now
Hard to love the shooter
Or so it would seem
This is a madness so shocking
That even second-hand, it stops the mind
There is no comprehending this as there is nothing there that can be comprehended
Love
Patience, Presence
These are words to live by for those near
To anyone else, who cannot bear this
Be gentle in this hour of senselessness
Refrain from the mistake
Of the wise men in the book of Job
Answer “why” with silence
Do not presume to know the mind of God
It might seem
That we must find the courage
To face chaos with love
Look within now
And know that it is there