No words, but I can't stay silent

  

I am sad. 

These past days I have been silent on the shootings that have rocked America.

I have struggled to find words.

I have cried while reading the morning paper.

I have fumed while reading Facebook.

I have buried my head in the sand thinking that if I say nothing it'll be OK. 

But it's not.

I grieve for my black friends, for police officers, for my hometown, for America. 

I grieve for a country that emancipated slaves more than a century ago and still hasn't figured out how to live and love together. 

I grieve that here in Roanoke, Virginia, I have precious few friends who don't look like me.

Since we moved back home, to Roanoke, I have longed for the diversity that surrounded me when we lived in Connecticut. There, at a small Christian school where I taught and the boys attended, we were the minority. When Camden sang in the middle school chorus, he was a pasty white face in a sea of browns. In second grade, when Benjy said "asked", he pronounced it "axed". And it was OK. It was beautiful. 

  

Here, we live in a town largely segregated by the train tracks that traverse our city and the mid-century urban renewal projects that further divided us. 

Black to the north. White to the south.

I grieve that.

And now I'm left with no words. 

My thoughts are a jumble of hurt and dismay. 

I don't want to be a noisy gong, but I want to tell my friends and students that I love them, and they matter. 

Their lives matter. 

Maybe I just need to revisit the 2nd graders I had a few years ago. Revisit their smiling faces and the dreams they had. And pray that their dreams will be fulfilled. 

"So do not fear, for I am with you;
do not be dismayed, for I am your God.
I will strengthen you and help you;
I will uphold you with my righteous right hand."

-- Isaiah 41:10