By the time I finished drawing a tribute piece to the fallen in Buffalo, it happened again.
This time in Texas. This time with children. Almost ten years after one of the most tragic days I’ve lived through… in Connecticut with children.
I don’t know what more can be said… those with the ability to do something don’t listen. Don’t act. Like Amanda Gorman puts it, “it takes a monster to kill children, but to watch monsters kill children again and again and do nothing–it’s inhumanity.”
My mind goes back to the animated short I saw years ago, of parents going through the bedroom of their child shot at school, folding the clothes they won’t wear again, looking through the sports trophies, drawings on walls, and remembering their meals in high chairs… their first complete sentences… their games of make believe.
As much as I try to be empathetic, I truly cannot understand how anybody responds to a week like this one with anything other than the deepest rage-grief that won’t accept anything short of a solution.
To quote one of my favorite theologians, Miroslav Volf, there is something deeply hypocritical about praying for a problem you are unwilling to resolve.
"And when ye spread forth your hands, I will hide mine eyes from you: yea, when ye make many prayers, I will not hear: your hands are full of blood."