
"Daisies for Blacksburg, Virginia" (c) 2007 Stu Jenks
[This image was taken in the foothills of the Santa Catalina Mountains, north of Tucson, last Saturday, perhaps around the time that Seung-Hui Cho was purchasing his second handgun.
My prayers and love go out to all those who were touched by this horrible tragedy in Blacksburg; the parents of the Dead, the children of the Dead, the frightened, the hurt, the injured, the tramatized. May healing occur for all of them and for all of us.
I also plead and pray that we place blame where it is belongs, not at the feet of the police or with the administation of Virginia Tech, but with the one person, who apparently with premeditation and volition commited these murders.
Seung-Hui Cho.
Lastly, a brief commentary:
I don't believe in Absolute Safety. This, I believe, is a specifically American delusion. Ask most people in the developing world, in Africa, in South America, in China, if they believe they can be protected ABSOLUTELY from harm, and they will, at best, look at you with puzzlement; at worst, laugh at you. Ask any poor kid in Compton, any adult child of alcoholics in Iowa, any old woman whose next door neighbors are crack addicts in Crack Central in Tucson and you will likely get a similiar response.
The World, as I see it, has always been a wondrously odd dicotomy of healing and hurt, comfort and cruelty, beauty and ugliness, love and resentment, peace and conflict, Heaven and Hell. And to expect otherwise is to wish to live in a shopping mall.
All I can do is be the best man I can be, be awake enough to avoid most danger, give love freely, let go of control, create some truth and beauty, and to try and leave the World a bit better than I found. That's pretty much it. A tall order granted, but so worth the effort.
As Joseph Campbell once said, 'Lean toward the Light.' I pray for us all to move to the Light, whatever that means to you, and to bring a bit of it back, to ourselves and to our community.
Love, light and luck,
Stu]