that amish school house

today the events that happened in that Amish school house on October 2nd set in. I have an image in my mind that is so strong.

I keep thinking about how little girls have those bony little shoulder blades that detach from their back and poke out like wing buds. Now I imagine the backs of those young girls as they stood facing the chalkboard, the tips of their delicate little shoulder blades held tense under the starched clothes. Those little girlish shoulder blades, the slight little angles of bone that are so small and vulnerable. The small frame of their torsos that would be torn with bullets - their fast beating heart like bird wings, frantic inside those narrow bands of bone worn so trustingly over the life they would contain only briefly.

I pray that those bullets were like winged doves, slowed by the power of God so that they gently parted the flesh that hides the heart, and and then shattered in the instant of contact, the pain a brief moment of esctasy that blurred blindingly into nearness with God. That in that instant their blood and bodies became Christ's, his life soaking up their pain, a joyous reunion.

i think about the knees giving way. their horrible waiting passed. the silence settling calmly in the valves and veins, as all slows weakly, and the pulse of this life is gone. covered heads, lifeless eyes resting on a wood floor.



one of the fathers said that they thought it was God's plan and they were going to have to pick up the pieces and keep going. reread that. and reread it. and put a stake down, right there in that exact spot. I think a year ago I would have screamed to the heavens that it most certainly was not God's will that innocent children would die, protesting in the name of the "God beyond God" as Tillich so eloquently put it. but i think that thinking was a chink in my theology, even though it was in the name of life and truly a desire not to see God's good name marred with "desiring" innocent blood. Now I think I would trod the same line as that father, and attempt the same brave, helpless trust in God. Faith in the surpassing ability of God's love to cover over all the sin of this world, and human responsibility to trust and keep going. thinking of Job who loses his ten (10, T-E-N) children in an instant and says shall we accept good from the Lord and not bad? The "Thou you slay me, I will trust you Lord" wild card. he gives and takes away; our minds must choose to trust God and not the situation. i hope it rains soon. i need a heavy sky to push down on me.