Christmas Carol

I have postponed posting a blog.  It seems appropriate in the light of such darkness.

Our collective tranquility has been amputated.  We have been ravaged.  We are disheveled by the sorrow viewed through a prism of tears of the family tableaux branded on our conscience by the recent occurrence in Connecticut.   

The magnitude of such events is unquantifiable and claustrophobic.  In the confounding grip of unfathomable wounds, we search in vain for words to express raw emotions.  Severance leaves us speechless.

There is a pronounced illiteracy to grief.

In numbed stillness, we lack the ability to reorganize our minds, and suffer woeful fatigue.  The dark has thickened, bleak and desolate.  It is impossible to understand a part let alone have a sense of the whole.

The national vocabulary increased collectively by 3 last week:  “Glock,” “Sig Saur,” “Bushmaster.”

All the desiccated words that have been disgorged cannot blot them out. 

Children are learning the alphabet in multiples of three:  NRA.  Magazines are no longer what we read as mindless pastime.  Mathematical equations center on numbers attached to assault weapons.

We all own pieces of the wreckage.

But there has also arisen an exquisite tribal order – an order of humanity for the sole purpose of endurance through this dark labyrinth of bereavement.  We “connect.”

Words can leave vapor trails.  Interjecting multiple “very’s” and numerous “so’s” does not empower declaratives for sufficient expression.  Milton himself lacks authority to chronicle such hollow purposelessness.  It is impossible to speak the unspeakable. 

Silence, on the other hand, penetrates the soul – a quiet cataloging of grief.  Hushed moments of meditation and reflection are our voice, our articulation, our balm.  

We have witnessed the nobility of the meek.

The winter solstice will arrive shortly, and a portion of illumination will be grafted onto the succeeding days that will disperse the darkness and salve and heal the gaping wounds that afflict us nationally and personally.

We will mend cell by cell, when blessed amnesia mutes the horror, and we can recall once more that before the slaughter of the innocents, a Child was born.

We will remember that the tomb was empty, the manger full.

Sing Noel. Perhaps nothing more needs to be said.