It has been a week since the tragic gunning down of children and staff at Red Hook Elementary School in Newtown Connecticut. I can't sleep , so I write this to try and bring some personal closure to these events and for that matter the year of 2012. It does not really matter if it is read by anyone or not. It's for me but feel free to read on. This Christmas season I have thought little about Jesus Christ. Actually since the shootings a biblical phrase keeps coming back to me. It comes from John the Baptist.......I am but a voice crying out in the wilderness. In my youth I with a youthful arrogance seemed to be surrounded by much more certainty. History study is full of tragedy , societies collapsing , pain. Maybe history has caught up with me. I do feel somewhat in the wilderness , maybe because I have been in Newtown and once looked at an apartment rental there. But more likely after Sandy blew through , leaving much wreckage , recent surgery which permanently altered my voice and the small children of Newtown no longer with us or with a permanent dark shadow that will not recede within their lifetimes I feel like I am spending time in a different space. A place of less certain civil signposts. On facebook so many people insisted this week that there are few things more comforting at times like this than the warm muzzle of a gun. Our congress can't seem to come up with any solutions to pressing problems. Our nation is about as divided as it was in the post Civil War era. I am a voice crying out in the wilderness. Perhaps the same wilderness those children may have felt before they were slaughtered. A voice drowned out by the distance we have placed between ourselves , our families , our communities. I had best be careful ........that wilderness may not bring out strength like it seems to with The Baptist.....we all might wander in this current wilderness so long it will seem like normal and we will all drift off into a world we do not know and cannot make our way in.
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