Rachel Cries For Her Children

 

We had an "Active Shooter" drill at our grade school yesterday morning, much like the fire drills you may remember from your school days.  My emotions were mixed; it's the smart thing to do in light of the Sandy Hook tragedy, but devastatingly sad to think it's necessary.  The eighth graders I was with aren't dumb; they're old enough to figure out that bullets can break locks and closet doors can't stop high caliber rounds.  I tried to assure them that while there is no such thing as 100% security, there are things you can do to be smart and safer in an emergency (I'm not sure they believed me).  As I left the building after class I was filled with a mixture of sadness and rage.  When the Cold War ended I had hopped that the next generation would grow up with less anxiety.  I thought we had a chance to live in relative peace and security.  Then 9/11 shattered all that, and now these random acts of violence that are invading our social sanctuaries are leading to dread greater than Khrushchev or Brezhnev ever inspired.

We are searching for meaning, and the answers seem distant.  People ask where God is, and so do I.  I have long ago reconciled myself to the idea that God's plan is bigger than we can take in from our limited vantage point inside time and space.  Also, that we have free will, and He respects us so much He allows us to exercises it, even when it hurts us and others.   God is not a slave driver; He wants us to follow His will, but will not force us to do so.  And yes, on days like Friday, and yesterday, I wonder why He couldn't have made an exception, at least this once.

While I question God, I always end up coming back to us.  We were given this world, so instead of questioning God so much I tend to ask what are we doing with it?  Specifically, we were given stewardship over the earth.  Think of it as a lease agreement or a business partnership, but much deeper.  I'm not a deist; God didn't walk away after He signed over the deed.  He is still a providential guide.  It's still His plan at work, leading to a final end point of history.  But He gave us a lot of responsibility to organize things down here.  A very enigmatic question Jesus asks in the Gospel is when He returns, will the Son of Man find faith on earth?  This implies, at the very least, that we will arrange our world according to God's plan and designs as we understand them.  So when the End comes, and the King returns for his "inspection," will what He sees reflect that ideal.  As a Catholic I'm not writing of some Sharia style government, but one that has the Divine Law in mind, and certain core values as guiding principles.  One that understands its limitations, and allows God to walk with us.  Our contemporary, "Post Modern" world view does not allow for this type of arrangement, and we are now paying the price.  Human beings are the center of the new universe, and reason is our god and we are now reaping the results.  

When I was in grad school I was told that we need to have a values free approach to education.  It is not the schools place, so the reasoning goes, to tell children what is right and wrong, out side of very broad notions of decency and decorum.  But things like promoting a set of virtues, including faith, and even patriotism, are considered passe impositions of a bygone, unenlightened  age.  The trouble is that there is no such thing as values free education.  If you take one set of values away then it will be replaced, knowingly or not, by another.  There are no vacuums in a classroom apart from those used to clean the rugs.  We have replaced the traditional values, rooted in faith (in a general way) and patriotism with a secularized, individualistic hedonism, centered on a cult the of the state.   There is no reference point for family, community or God.

What caused this young man to act as he did in this particular case is complicated and we are still gathering information.  Evidently the mother was a member of her local parish.  Maybe God was a part of his upbringing.  It would be wrong for me to apply all the ills of society to this case.  But there is a bigger picture; a culture that is becoming more fragmented, dislocated, with young people living in more isolation.  One of our summer camps reported that it is getting more and more difficult to get their campers to play together in organized activities, so many are use to playing alone, or with just one other person, on a video console at home.  A small, trivial example of a real problem. In the larger sense we need to ask if we are we better socialized and more humane now than sixty years ago?  In some ways yes, but in a whole lot more ways, no.

We are convinced that we live in the best of all possible worlds and that those who complain about restoring traditional values want to "go back to the '50's"  Well, no, I wouldn't want to go back to Jim Crow or the sexism that existed back then.  I love the technological advancements we've made.  All and all today is pretty good on those fronts.  But this isn't living.  Wondering if your child will be leaving school in a bus or a hearse, or if you'll make it out of the movie theater in one piece is not progress, nor is it a fair exchange for the social advancements we've made. 

Don't get me wrong.  I hear from all sorts of people who lament the "good old days,"  and I understand that those days weren't always so good.  But there was a rootedness that people had, a deeper sense of family and community responsibility that is simply lacking today. Those that think a family is who you choose and the government is the one thing we all belong to are deluding themselves.  This has not worked, and it will only get worse.  These attitudes are contributing to an impersonal society, where life is cheep.  There needs to be a radical restructuring of society, keeping the best of what we have while restoring core values of faith, family and patriotism (as opposed to nationalism or leader worship).  Only then will things begin to turn around.  I'm not a Utopian.  There will always be people who do evil things.  But as the President has said, that isn't an excuse to do nothing. 

I have not mentioned guns.  Yes, we need sensible gun control laws.  I doubt the framers really intended for the citizenry to be armed with these types of gruesome weapons.  But we can eliminate every gun from the land, but it will not solve the deeper issues effecting us as a society.  It begins by renewing our lease with God.

We had the Christmas Pageant at our school this morning, much like the ones you may remember from your own school days.  I was filled with joy and contentment as I watched the children sing and dance.  After various classes sang Christmas songs from around the world, a group put on an adaptation of The Nutcracker.  I looked at those children a little differently this year.  I saw more clearly the innocents, promise and spark of Divine life within them than before.  It's sad that it takes a tragedy to do that.  I also thought of the life ahead of them, and my prayer was that they live in a world a little less cruel, violent and warped.  A pretty meager prayer, I admit.  But it's really in our hands, and much loftier goals are possible if we say yes to God, and let Him be our guide.