It is Wednesday evening, just over a week after an animal less than worthy of being called a man shot and killed or injured practically every member of the little Baptist church in Sutherland Springs, TX. This shooting unfortunately became the worst multiple shooting in Texas, overtaking the Killeen "Luby's Massacre" that occurred in 1991. Just as the "good Samaritans" in Sutherland Springs confronted the shooter and possibly saved lives, the shooter in Killeen was confronted by police officers who were just across the street from Luby's, saving lives in that situation.
But as I sit here tonight trying to "blog" I find that the weight of the vicarious pain I feel from this latest mass killing, while still not over the shock and outrage of the Las Vegas mass shooting, the truck attack in New York, the church shooting in South Carolina, and just a couple of days ago, the shootings in California, seems to dampen my spirit and drown my creativity. So much hate and anger in just three or four people has left well over one hundred people dead in the span of just a couple of months. And this is just in the United States. The numbers killed and injured in mass casualty incidents around the world are almost beyond calculation.
I like to write about light-hearted things, funny things, or factual snippets on things of interest in this nation or in our sister nations around the world. But it is still a struggle, a week later, to feel light-hearted, or to sink my mind into research about historical or interesting things. The thought of the fear and pain of those church members, those little children, and the hate of that animal...I guess that even from the distance at which I heard of these things, still leaves my heart, my mind numb. My prayers and sympathy for all those left behind, those just now beginning to bury their dead. It is difficult enough to lose loved ones in natural, normal ways. I cannot even imagine what those left behind are going through.
I cannot begin to understand what it is like to be an that safest of all places, a house of worship, and suddenly bullets begin flying through the air, people, friends and relatives, begin falling, dying. Yet this is becoming all too common in the United States. Our brothers and sisters in foreign lands have known this fear as a reality for many years. And in the United States, houses of worship have been targets occasionally for many years, but not on the scale we have seen in the past three or four years.
One of the most horrific of those "older" church attacks occurred in Birmingham, Alabama on September 15, 1963 when a Ku Klux Klan member (whose name, which can easily be found with a few seconds' research, I refuse to dignify by writing in this post) made a crude bomb powered by FIFTEEN sticks of dynamite. The bomb was planted in the basement of the 16th Street Baptist Church. It exploded just after 11:00 AM, killing four young ladies and injuring more than twenty other church members. These girls were Cynthia Wesley, Carole Robertson, and Ada Mae Collins, all three age fourteen, and Denise McNair, age eleven. Their deaths were just as tragic and senseless as those of the children and adults killed last week in Sutherland Springs. If there was anything even the least positive in the loss of those four young girls, it was that their deaths were unconscionable even by the White America of that time. Discrimination and racism continued after the church bombing, but the era of wide-spread, socially acceptable discrimination against Black Americans had been dealt a near-fatal blow.
Another thing I cannot even begin to fathom is how a man's heart and soul can be filled with such hate, rage, and such evil that he can kill men, women, and children in cold blood. How does a person reach such a point in his life that he does not value the lives of other humans, or even his own? It seems that personal problems, a hate-filled life, the desire to harm others, can lead a person to act in ways that rival the worst acts of the deadliest terrorist. Motives? I doubt if the police will ever determine a motive in the Sutherland Springs killings, and even if they do, does that make the tragedy any easier to understand? Does it make this shooting more tolerable? Oh, he was crazy...does that help a church member deal with the loss if his entire immediate family? Motives help give "closure" but only to the paper file. People may never understand why these things happen until they are finally able to ask the Creator Himself.
Speaking of the Creator, He did a great thing when he created man. He gave mankind a great ability. Human beings have a wonderful ability to rise up and carry on even after the worst of disasters or criminal acts. The people where these latest mass shootings have occurred will rebound and carry on in spite of the almost insurmountable losses. As for me, I am sure I will be able to reawaken my creativity in a little while, but tonight my thoughts, indeed my heart and my prayers, are with all of those who have suffered loss at the hands of such hateful and heartless animals.
Just some of my thoughts and feelings on a Wednesday evening...
May God be with us all, and may God remove the hate from man's heart...
But as I sit here tonight trying to "blog" I find that the weight of the vicarious pain I feel from this latest mass killing, while still not over the shock and outrage of the Las Vegas mass shooting, the truck attack in New York, the church shooting in South Carolina, and just a couple of days ago, the shootings in California, seems to dampen my spirit and drown my creativity. So much hate and anger in just three or four people has left well over one hundred people dead in the span of just a couple of months. And this is just in the United States. The numbers killed and injured in mass casualty incidents around the world are almost beyond calculation.
I like to write about light-hearted things, funny things, or factual snippets on things of interest in this nation or in our sister nations around the world. But it is still a struggle, a week later, to feel light-hearted, or to sink my mind into research about historical or interesting things. The thought of the fear and pain of those church members, those little children, and the hate of that animal...I guess that even from the distance at which I heard of these things, still leaves my heart, my mind numb. My prayers and sympathy for all those left behind, those just now beginning to bury their dead. It is difficult enough to lose loved ones in natural, normal ways. I cannot even imagine what those left behind are going through.
I cannot begin to understand what it is like to be an that safest of all places, a house of worship, and suddenly bullets begin flying through the air, people, friends and relatives, begin falling, dying. Yet this is becoming all too common in the United States. Our brothers and sisters in foreign lands have known this fear as a reality for many years. And in the United States, houses of worship have been targets occasionally for many years, but not on the scale we have seen in the past three or four years.
One of the most horrific of those "older" church attacks occurred in Birmingham, Alabama on September 15, 1963 when a Ku Klux Klan member (whose name, which can easily be found with a few seconds' research, I refuse to dignify by writing in this post) made a crude bomb powered by FIFTEEN sticks of dynamite. The bomb was planted in the basement of the 16th Street Baptist Church. It exploded just after 11:00 AM, killing four young ladies and injuring more than twenty other church members. These girls were Cynthia Wesley, Carole Robertson, and Ada Mae Collins, all three age fourteen, and Denise McNair, age eleven. Their deaths were just as tragic and senseless as those of the children and adults killed last week in Sutherland Springs. If there was anything even the least positive in the loss of those four young girls, it was that their deaths were unconscionable even by the White America of that time. Discrimination and racism continued after the church bombing, but the era of wide-spread, socially acceptable discrimination against Black Americans had been dealt a near-fatal blow.
Another thing I cannot even begin to fathom is how a man's heart and soul can be filled with such hate, rage, and such evil that he can kill men, women, and children in cold blood. How does a person reach such a point in his life that he does not value the lives of other humans, or even his own? It seems that personal problems, a hate-filled life, the desire to harm others, can lead a person to act in ways that rival the worst acts of the deadliest terrorist. Motives? I doubt if the police will ever determine a motive in the Sutherland Springs killings, and even if they do, does that make the tragedy any easier to understand? Does it make this shooting more tolerable? Oh, he was crazy...does that help a church member deal with the loss if his entire immediate family? Motives help give "closure" but only to the paper file. People may never understand why these things happen until they are finally able to ask the Creator Himself.
Speaking of the Creator, He did a great thing when he created man. He gave mankind a great ability. Human beings have a wonderful ability to rise up and carry on even after the worst of disasters or criminal acts. The people where these latest mass shootings have occurred will rebound and carry on in spite of the almost insurmountable losses. As for me, I am sure I will be able to reawaken my creativity in a little while, but tonight my thoughts, indeed my heart and my prayers, are with all of those who have suffered loss at the hands of such hateful and heartless animals.
Just some of my thoughts and feelings on a Wednesday evening...
May God be with us all, and may God remove the hate from man's heart...
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