I was small when Columbine happened. I do remember hearing about the shootings at Virginia Tech in high school, though. I remember seeing the grief but not really partaking in it. The first of these tragedies to really hit me in the gut was what happened in Aurora this summer. I think you grow into sadness and grief with age, but so many children today did not get that luxury. They were forced to endure a terror and chaos which they could not pretend to understand.

This is hard. It’s been taking hours to sink in. I cried just now and called my dad. Then I sat on our little couch with my physics book closed on my lap and thought. I remembered that President Roosevelt once called December 7^th “a date which will live in infamy.” I thought that really every date ought live in infamy.  Each day of the year is a remembrance to someone of great travesty and pain inflicted by another human being. I thought each date ought to weigh so heavy that it should be hard to get up in the morning.

I looked out the window and saw the star on top of Rockwell, the coming star, the calling star. I remembered a different Child and a different death. I thought that Christmastide is not always a celebration. It does need to be forever merry. The advent season is a coming and a promise of coming again. Today it is you and me and all of our brothers and sisters on our knees, begging for all these things to be brought to fruition, for God to send His Son again to heal the broken hearts and the broken world, begging to be reminded that God is not dead nor doth He sleep. I thought that today of all days, in the midst of infamy and weeping sons and daughters, we must not forget the Child in the manger.