no preservatives

sleeping with bread

I have never liked sandwiches. As a child, my mother would pack me a lunch with a single piece of white bread and a slice of the only lunch meat I would eat at the time (Lebanon bologna). I would proceed to take them apart and eat them separately – the meat first, and a few bites of the dry bread. Even now, I often have my peculiarities in that realm. I also tend to take other things apart that perhaps should remain together.

Yesterday, when I read the news about the events at VA Tech, I was saddened – I am sure we all were, but one thing that made me the saddest of all was my initial reaction. I felt….nothing. My mind recognized it as a terrible tragedy, but I didn’t feel tragic. My thoughts went out to those who were suffering, but my heart didn’t flutter. I wasn’t surprised. I wanted to be, but I wasn’t. In fact, until I came across a list of the victims on MSN and read a short profile of Liviu Librescu, it didn’t hit home. He was a 76 year old instructor who was born in Romania, survived the holocaust, and emigrated to Israel before finally settling in The US. He died while blocking the door to his classroom, thus enabling many of his students to escape through windows before the shooter gunned him down. He survived so much only to be murdered in a place of higher education – a place where children are sent to arm them with knowledge and abilities designed to protect them from hopelessness and destitution.

The world has become a very small place. We are now able to hear and see news from around the globe while it is actually taking place. The hurts and ails of the globe are our daily diet. In years before communication lines were so swift, each community banded together in their griefs and joys. It was not necessary to seek a personal element because those suffering were a part of every day life in the community. Now, I may know what happens in another country, but I don’t know why six police cars and an ambulance are visiting a house two blocks away. I have become desensitized to much of the horror because, to some extent, it is no more real to me than the latest box office smash.

As my husband and I drove toward a concert hall this evening, I found myself watching the rush hour commuters at a corner bus stop. They probably ride the same bus with the same people on almost a daily basis, and yet, in the three minutes we sat at the traffic light, not once did any of them make eye contact with each other. We have likely all done the same on elevators, in grocery lines, in public restrooms.

I am glad to live in an era in which technology has brought the ends of the earth closer together, but I grieve that we do it at the loss of care for our neighbor next door. I grieve that the regular onslaught of the world’s tribulations makes me, personally, build a thicker shell of protection around my emotions.

Consolation is difficult to find when the nation has been shaken by any kind of tragedy, but there is some still. We, in much the same way as the village of old, stand together in our grief. Our minds turn together in prayer or positive thoughts for those afflicted. We each count our own blessings a lot more accurately for a moment in time. The political and spiritual divides continue to exist, but for the moment, the united grief takes precedence over the disagreement.

And on a more personal note, an Israeli professor who gave up his life that others might live helps me, for an instant, to take my eyes off of the hardened crust of apathetic depression which creates a barrier between the desolations and consolations of my own soul.