If you live in Virginia, you are connected to the tragedy. It is inevitable. You have connections to VATech. A dear friend’s daughter is a senior who is a teaching assistant in the engineering department. I’ve met the daughter, had lunch with her. She just lost her favorite professor and 10 students that she has assisted this year. Another friend is a teacher at the high school from which the shooter came, and from which two victims graduated. Still others graduated from VATech or went there for different parts of their education. Others have friends.

This arrived in my in-box this morning from CoachWonderWoman, who is also a HokieParent (her son goes to VaTech) … as she wrote, “It captures the support the students and extended community has received this week.”:

This hasn’t simply dominated the news here, in Virginia, it has penetrated our very bones.

Psalm 34

6 This poor people called, and the LORD heard us;
he saved them out of all their troubles.

7 The angel of the LORD encamps around those who fear him,
and he delivers them.

8 Taste and see that the LORD is good;
blessed are those who take refuge in him.

18 The LORD is close to the brokenhearted
and saves those who are crushed in spirit.

So I was, at first taken with the idea of OneDayBlogSilence, which sprang up so quickly in the wake of the tragedy (and please note, dear reader, that I refer to it as a tragedy, not a massacre … there is a deep magic in the meaning of words and we must choose them carefully for the good or ill of the future.) Until I began to see the headlines of other tragedies from around the world that same day. 30 were killed in a bomb blast in Baghdad. How many were killed in Darfur? In Afghanistan? How many women were raped? How many other random senseless acts of violence stopped the bright shining lives of young people around the world on April 16, 2007. Young people with grieving mothers, brothers, sisters, fathers, aunts, uncles, friends, cousins, teachers, professors, pastors, mentors. Old people who had dynamically effected and affected the world around them in ripples that flow out uncounted. So …. on April 30, this blog will also stand with others, silent and dark in memory of victims of violence everywhere.

Yes, weep and grieve until the Spirit is poured
down on us from above
And the badlands desert grows crops
and the fertile fields become forests.
Justice will move into the badlands desert.
Right will build a home in the fertile field.
And where there’s Right, there’ll be Peace
and the progeny of Right: quiet lives and endless trust.
My people will live in a peaceful neighborhood—
in safe houses, in quiet gardens.
The forest of your pride will be clear-cut,
the city showing off your power leveled.
But you will enjoy a blessed life,
planting well-watered fields and gardens,
with your farm animals grazing freely.
(Isaiah 32:15-20 (The Message))