By Rev. Barry Abraham Zavah Alpine
Following the deaths of 10 people at the Santa Fe, Texas, high school, a story appeared about a 63-year-old teacher working two jobs to take care of the chronic medical needs of her husband. Her son, a detective with a local police department, identified the body of his murdered mother, Cynthia Tisdale!
Let’s recognize that at Columbine, Sandy Hook, the outdoors concert massacre in Las Vegas, Parkland and now, Santa Fe that the blood of the innocents was once held in a body. Each body had a name. Each name had its personal stories of love and loss, tragedy and redemptive growth, challenges and hope. Each story held the truth of our common human journey.
We are capable; even in the face of mind-numbing pain to identify with any number of their stories as our own. Let us open our hearts and minds. Commit to having our elected representatives do something already. The risk is not completely eliminating the incidents, but taking serious measurable steps in the direction of reducing an epidemic not plaguing other modern, Western nations.
One student interviewed said she knew it would happen. Did it need to come to that where a mass shooting is as predictable to students as starting kindergarten or graduating high school?
We aren’t going to hear fewer lamentable stories until each has been understood as our own.
