CLUTTER

On Saturday morning, my daughter and I finished our reading of The Hobbit just in time for the opening weekend of the movie, which we then went to see on Sunday afternoon. I have written here about just how much it means to me to share a reading life with her and what it meant to me that she wanted to read this book with her dad. I could not help, then, to have at the very fore of my thoughts as we read the final pages together the parents who on the day before had stolen from them all opportunity to share such a moment ever again with their own children. Let us be grateful for the small moments when we are gifted them.

By nature, I am a quiet person. I find it extraordinarily difficult most of the time to articulate all that I am feeling or thinking about a thing. I can be hindered by thoughts that most anything I might say will fall terribly short of adequate. I find it awfully hard to post here this week for that reason and for others, not the least of which is that a blog about reading books seems all the more self-indulgent in light of what has happened. Not to say, of course, that unimaginable violence does not occur everyday in our world. I am struggling, too, with what it is exactly that I should say here. This is not a blog about news events or social issues or politics. It is a blog about the books I read and the things they prompt me to think about. And that is what I wish for it to remain.

Nevertheless, part of my premise is that being a reader causes one to consider more fully the world and its lingering questions. So, how can I leave unsaid here anything about the terrible events that occurred this week? At the same time, perhaps this is not the best forum to air how very strongly I do feel about this latest tragedy and the reasons I believe events like it continue to happen in what we naively and arrogantly consider to be a culture and society somehow so far ahead of the rest of the world. 

Also, I cannot seem to find the words to truly express the tangle of thoughts cluttering around in my head over the last few days. The world does not seem to present itself to me in stark black and white terms as it seems to for others. There are simply too many things that do not make sense. But, there are a some things that do: that we owe ourselves and our children more than we are giving and that a culture of fear and violence is not a culture that can be sustained. Nor is it a culture that speaks to the kind of community we absolutely can be and should ever strive for.