It's Easy to Love Boston
More tragedy, more struggling to explain to our children
why our streets are exploding in yet more violence. Once again our national consciousness is
raised and we are reminded of what we can be when we draw together. Boston could have been any city, really. The city itself is not heroic, although the
response of its citizenry may be. It’s easy
to cheer for the heroes, to cry with the maimed and to grieve with the families
of the dead. It has become too easy.
Why don’t we react with the same righteous anger to
similar tragedies happening everyday in our neighborhoods? Why don’t we cry out in collective anger over
the rape of a young black woman in small town USA or over the sound of
incessant gunshots in impoverished Chicago neighborhoods? Sometimes it feels
like our values are selective and triggered only by mass horror. That’s
probably not fair but that’s how I feel.
But now … now we face the “how?” How are we called to respond to the killers,
to the perpetrators of violence? Can
there be redemption for them? Or have we balled up and stuffed God neatly into
our personal systems of justice, banishing all thought of love and mercy? The injured, those traumatized, the families
of those killed have every reason, every right to be angry, to grieve. Even, perhaps, to hate. Maybe it has been left to the rest of us to
do the forgiving. Pray for
strength. Pray justice. Pray for peace.
Kathy Flynn, Candidate
Madison, Wisconsin
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