The Day the Heavens Wept

Rain Come Down
By Shawn Kirchner

Come rain, come down.
Come rain, come down
Heaven's tears of mercy,
Come a-running down.

Say no words, it is too soon.
Say no words out loud.
But wrap your quiet arms around,
Hide us in your cloud.

Come wash away this grief and pain
and let all hearts be clean.
And bring the fairest flowers to meet
The sorrows we have seen.

A little lower than the Angels
We were born to be
Yet which of all the creatures
knows this misery?

Come rain, come down.
Come rain, come down.
Heaven's tears of mercy,
Come a-running down.

Three days after the massacre of Virginia Tech, light drops of rain cover Blacksburg. In some symbolic guesture, it seems as if the heavens wept in agony, yearning to offer some sort of comfort to this grieving community. As the heavens issue a flood of tears it's almost as if God himself cries for the casualties of this horrendous turn of events.

But Heaven also cries for Seung-Hui Cho, you know. For him to turn to violence, you see, he ached, he cried, he yearned for something better. In his mind, violence was only a means to an end, albeit a violent one.

What makes a man want to harm his fellow man? Perhaps the answer lies inside all of us. What makes us snap? what goes on in our minds that wants us to resort to such selfish and unfeeling actions? In his video, he commented that students teased him, taunted him, and abused and excuded him. Perhaps I was right in my blog, "People Need People," posted on Tuesday, April 10, 2007.

Seung-Hui Cho says he had no choice, and that the "blood is on our hands" -- but is he right? would he have resorted to such a deadly end if we just remembered to include people like him and make him feel loved and welcome?

Yes, he held the gun. Yes, he shot, in cold blood, 32 students, before ending the carnage with his own life. Yes, he was the angry one with a grisly vendetta to settle, but why did there have to be a vendetta in the first place?

For me, the biggest victim of all is Seung-Hui Cho. He was a victim of his own self hate, his own desire for destruction. Morphed into some evil form of what once was an innocent and pure man, he became both the hunter and the prey in a chase marred by his own sin and carnage. Fueled by the indifference of others, it lead him to a fate worse than death.

Remember, that when it rains, it pours -- and that when Heaven cries, it cries for all the victims, even Seung-Hui Cho.

The Beauty of a Well Chosen Word

Even if we do not talk, we communicate. Its part of our everyday lives so much, we don't even really think about it. You communicate to me, by reading and commenting on this blog, that you are interested. You communicate to the person next to you that you are busy by not talking to them.

But communication as we know it has changed drastically over time, so much that those living say, 100 years ago, would not know what to do if they saw our world. We don't sit around the fire, we don't read for pleasure, we don't cultivate ourselves, and we definitely don't give little talent shows at dinner parties to entertain our guests -- we just don't.

What do we have? We have cell phones and text messages and computer games and.... (shudder)... reality TV. What we say and what we do has been quickly replaced by the e-revolution that has massacred the way we think and speak on a daily basis.

Sorry all ye who stand by your computers: IM speak is not a real language. Abbreviates like, "LOL" or "JK" or "OMG" will not now or will never make it into the dictionary. The average swear word (ugh... another story for another time) can easily conjugate into any part of speech or tense, so for some, it replaces about 90% of what could be a very choice vocabulary.

Depending on your reasearch some will say that the average working vocabulary of the average high school senior is as high as 17,000 words, or as low as 5,000 words. My goodness! I have written papers longer than that! So between abbreviations and substitutions, high school students cultivate a thriving vocabulary list shorter than my term paper in English Class... lovely.

But regardless of your own vocabulary size, those who have a good command of the language the speak will always sound smarter, and educated.

So is there any hope for the future? Can we save ourselves and our posterity from a fate worse than stupidity? Sebastian Wren, PhD on BalancedReading.org, remarks, "Research has shown that past the 4th grade, the number of words a person knows depends primarily on how much time they spend reading. In fact, by the time they reach adulthood, people who make a habit of reading have a vocabulary that is about four times the size of those who rarely or never read. This disparity starts early and grows throughout life."

So in essence, you just need to turn off MTV and pick up a book. And in doing so, you and your posterity might re-learn the beauty of a well chosen word.

People Need People

Studies show that people who sleep in the same bed (and I do mean sleep) with other people tend to get a lower quality of sleep, due to the tossing and turning of one's bedmate. The same study also showed that the psychological effects of having a sleeping partner greatly increase one's happiness in the waking hours.

Another study showed that people, in times of stress will flock to others, as if the pescence of people alone would be enough to calm them.

People, as it seems, need people. It seems necessary, even crucial for people to have companionship and inclusion in their society. Whether you are willing to admit to it or not, whether it is concious or not, everyone wants to be part of the group, part of society, and part of a larger whole, bigger than themselves alone.

But what about those of which getting to be part of that whole seems just a little out of their grasp? What about those freaks, geeks, posers, and losers that, for some-odd reason do not merit inclusion?

Those whom we shut out of the group can, if they dont find inclusion elswhere, suffer serious repercussions later in life that can affect the way they live and operate.

Then one day, someday, as if snapped from nowhere, they will make their desires known. They will make that cry for inclusion, and unfortunately, sometimes it isn't pretty. Those who beg and beg for a friend, for a group to call their own, but come up empty handed can resort to sometimes deadly methods. Sometimes, they would literally kill for compainonship, either themselves or others.

These outcasts and scapegoats starve for the companionship of others, and with noone to give it, what else are they to do?

The moral of this sometimes tragic tale? Include those whom are cast out, noone likes to be an outcast. Everyone needs a friend. It can save their life you know. It may even, one day save your own.

Forever a Child

Have you ever spent the day with a "Forever" child? Have you ever spent the day with someone whose body grows, but their mind doesn't?

I had the privilege of doing exactly that a few days ago. I watched as we traversed the mall, how, around every corner, she found a new world of exiting things to touch, to feel, to explore. Its amazing how she found wonder in things that normal people tend to take for granted.

Content with exploring, we went to every store checked out every booth seemingly content to just look. Not until the very last ten minutes of our shopping journey, did she even consider buying. She just talked about the cares of a little child as she ran her fingers through racks and racks of clothes, bin of beads and necklaces, and other items of fancy. Her spoils from that day? Nothing much -- just a small teddy bear, which she made at Build-a-Bear.

Isn't interesting how a fourteen year old girl would find amusement in a teddy bear?

It seems as we grow up and get further down this road we call life, we tend to forget the wonder in everyday things.

Maybe we can take a lesson from the life of a "Forever" child and notice that some of the things that are worth looking for are right under our noses, waiting to be discovered. That childlike wonder should grace our character always and forever.

Dream of a Blessed Spirit by W.B. Yeats

All the heavy days are over;
Leave the body's coloured pride
Underneath the grass and clover,
With the feet laid side by side.

One with her are mirth and duty;
Bear the gold-embroidered dress,
For she needs not her sad beauty,
To the scented oaken press.

Hers the kiss of Mother Mary,
The long hair is on her face;
Still she goes with footsteps wary
Full of earth's old timid grace.

With white feet of angels seven
Her white feet go glimmering;
And above the deep of heaven,
Flame on flame, and wing on wing.

Bathing Suit Season

I put on my bating suit today. I did not go swimming or anything like that. I just wanted to see how it looked. Point in fact, for the first time, in a long time, I thought I looked good. I don't ever remember being this comfortable with my body before.

As I stood there, looking at myself in the silvery mirror, tracing ever curve of my body with my eyes, staring at the silver whale charm that hung around my neck, I saw a me I never felt comfortable seeing before -- and it was exhilarating.

The me I saw was not the me I thought I was.

I saw a woman who knew she was beautiful, even though she was not a size 2. I saw someone who, even though she was not tiny, had her own form of beautiful. She had a sexy set of curves, and she knew it.

It makes me happy to see her in the mirror, because I never saw her before, and I hope that she will always be there, whenever I look in the mirror. It was scary living life without her.

Peter Pan and the Believers

If there were ever a time to ever believe in faeries, I do belive now would be it.

It seems the world has forgotten what it was like to believe in something that is bigger than themselves (or in this case, smaller). Fantastic things seem just a little beyond our reach and it seems as if we all but give up dreaming for something that is only real when we clap our hands and believe it is.

But more important than the fantastic things that seem to pop out of some storybook from our childhood, humans as a whole have ceased to believe in some of the most simple, yet crucial parts of our existence.

Ask yourselves -- Do you believe in God? (any God, really.) Do you believe in others? and, do you believe in yourself? I have has the misfortune to cross paths with individuals who answer no to all three.

What a sad existence -- when you can't, even if you tried, believe in anyone or anything? When you don't believe in anything, you don't have anything to live for, or anyone to live for. When you dont have that, what is the puropse of living?

We need to believe in something, in order to make something worth surviving this hard road we call life.

Do me a favor -- Believe. Believe in anything. Its better than believing in nothing, and if we all have something to believe in, we can make this world something that ends in the happily ever after of our dreams.