Tragedy at Virginia Tech

Tragedy has struck the community at Virginia Tech, our state’s “other” fine flagship university, which is located around 120 miles southwest of my hometown, Charlottesville.
Apparently a single gunman went on a rampage there earlier today and killed at least 30 members of the university community– most likely, most of them students.
Obviously, this is a truly horrible blow for all members of the community there.
Equally obviously, we know that communities throughout Iraq have been suffering blows as huge as this one– or on occasions, even larger blows– on a daily or almost daily basis throughout the past 3-4 years. Many communities in sub-Saharan Africa suffer from gun violence on this scale, too. And last week, Algeria, in North Africa, was the scene of two extremely lethal suicide bombings…
Can we all unite in grief together, and in sad wonder at the senselessness of ultra-lethal weapons and the tragedy of their widespread availability and use in many different parts of the world?
Can we unite in sad wonder at the depth of alienation and hopelessness that leads some people to engage in mass killings, even sometimes to the point of throwing their own lives into the project, as well?
Can we unite with a commitment to support, help, and try to repair all those bereaved by these and other acts of violence?
Can we unite around a strengthened commitment never ourselves to resort to violence, and to redouble our search for the nonviolent ways that always do exist to resolve any differences among us as humans?
I have only been to Virginia Tech once. It was a magical half-day I spent there, in the summer of 2005. The Friends General Conference (FGC), which is the main body of ‘liberal’ north American Quakers, was holding its annual summer gathering in a small part of Tech’s beautiful campus, which is built from flinty blue-grey stone in the incredibly beautiful foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains. I wasn’t a participant in the gathering, but I made a special trip there one evening to spend a few hours with my dear friend Misty Gerner, who was then in a fairly advanced stage of her cancer. Misty, her husband, and I walked around the beautiful lawns a bit, and had dinner at a small nearby restaurant. Then Phil (the husband) left Misty and me alone a while. We walked and talked a whole lot more. She was wracked with bouts of pretty intense physical pain but her spirit was radiant.
I prefer to remember Tech’s campus as the place where I talked with Misty on that sunny evening about life, death, love, God, justice, peace, and the Middle East… She died last summer. Maybe a little part of her still hovers over the Tech campus. If so I hope she can help to comfort the many shocked and bereaved people there today.
God forgive us all for having let the spirit of violence permeate our communities and animate our actions to this extent.

17 thoughts on “Tragedy at Virginia Tech”

  1. Thanks for this, Helena. I also am shocked and horrified at this-how horrible…I send my condolences to all-indeed is it not time for GUN CONTROL on American streets? I think it is!
    KDJ

  2. Thank you Helena for the special linkage of this horror that has befallen Virginia — to your dear friend Misty Gerner.
    This one really hits hard. No I don’t know anyone there now. My son wanted to study engineering at VT – a top ranked school, and his wife of today actually was a VT student.
    Here at U. of Virginia, we tease about “all roads leading to Tech” — but to me, that vision is one of pastoral paradise.
    Hearing all these instant-neocons on CNN condemning VaTech for not having an always ready swat team, more firepower, more aggressive response procedures…. was infuriating, adding real insensitive insult to an injury to the entire state.
    I just want to grieve – yet we cannot leave the field to those who would use such incidents to take away even more of our liberties, build the walls of mistrust even higher….

  3. ah, I blew the smile – it’s all “dirt” roads lead to my idea of paradise.
    I am heartened to learn that our entire Congressional delegation – all of them, even Virgil- will be coming from Washington to Blacksburg tomorrow. Leave the politics in Washington….
    All roads, of any pavement, will lead to VaTech now.

  4. Speaking of Misty Gerner, I think she will notice that the young graduate engineering student who caught the dramatic footage on his cell phone (broadcast worldwide via CNN) happens to be a Palestinian…. (Jamal al-Bargoutti)
    Here’s the “nokia” footage:
    http://www.cnn.com/video/player/player.html?url=/video/us/2007/04/16/sot.va.tech.shooting.barghouti.cnn&wm=10
    And here’s an interview he gave
    http://www.cnn.com/video/player/player.html?url=/video/us/2007/04/16/sot.va.tech.shooting.barghouti.cnn
    He gave an even better interview w/ Wolf Blitzer later…. (where he mentioned in passing that he’d been in Saudi Arabia when the interior ministry there was bombed) sorry, don’t have a link for that yet….
    oh the ironies…

  5. “Can we unite in sad wonder at the depth of alienation and hopelessness that leads some people to engage in mass killings?’
    Helena, my condolences to all the families who have lost their loved ones, pray to God to mercy them.
    Its all tragic and terrible killing, I take this opportunity for our friends and families in Iraq may God save them and got them safely out from the hell they have been…
    Thanks for this post Helena…

  8. Statement tonight from U.VA.’s President John Casteen. http://www.virginia.edu/uvatoday/newsRelease.php?id=1882
    Tonight, “Virginia Tech is family.”
    Note the ending:
    Caleb Euhus, a student from Lynchburg, wrote a poem today entitled “Tech Wind.” He sent a copy this afternoon, and he agreed to my sharing its argument and some words from it with you. He invokes today’s fierce winds to combat and assuage the horror and anger that all thoughtful women and men must feel about today’s catastrophe in Blacksburg. Echoing sentiments as old as Lamentations, Mr. Euhus calls on nature itself — the very wind — to share this grief. The poem ends with the lines
    “Make haughty grass bow down its stalk/
    And mourn for all those killed.”
    Mr. Euhus speaks for all of us.

  10. One of the most powerful instincts of humans is to adopt or mimic the behavior of others. We see it all the time. So what is unusual, in a culture where a vibrant history of killing by gun – whether blacks, Native Americans, Korean villagers, Vietnamese peasants, Cambodian farmers, Guatamalen peasants, Palestinian farmers, Iraqi children – that some mimic the violent norm which our leaders act out. And course, among those who receive the message of these precedents, are the mentally distraught who inevitably take the message literally and act it out on their own. We Americans reap what we sow. It is delusional to think that a “killing norm” can be selectively managed so that only “our enemies” are killed.

  15. I think Reid has a point. Gun control reform has to be approached rationally. We shouldn’t succomb to the hysteria this horror inevitably induces. “GUN CONTROL NOW!” too closely echoes the screams for “PATRIOT ACT NOW!” heard all through 2001.
    TimothyL’s “mimicking” is a copout. His post ignores the free will Cho had to seek help for his problems and deal with the greivances he had. TimothyL’s manipulating this incident to hawk his pre-existing agenda to badmouth the U.S. And as for the idea of mimicking, well that video he mailed arguably resembled the videos al-Qaeda, Hamas, and Hezbollah suicide bombers make right before they kill people and “martyr” themselves, as Mr. Cho mentioned. Maybe he’s mimicking that instead, and Joshua types can manipulate the videos to hawk their own preset agendas?…

  17. that’s very very dramatical killing,one of the most pyscho free to live around virginia campus,so i hope the campus community for the next year more controlling the student about their mentality also personality

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