In all seriousness, part of having loves and joys is the un/necessary balance of sorrow and tragedy. Fifteen years ago I was 16. I worried more about driver's ed and what the cool kids in school thought of me. One man killing 14 women in Montreal was just a blip in my consciousness at the time.
Things change; I've changed. An excerpt from my sermon yesterday:
... Tomorrow marks a grim anniversary for the city of Montreal. Fifteen years ago, 14 university students, all of them women, were gunned down. An angry man killed them in cold blood. He had been refused by the military, rejected from the school of engineering and blamed these failures on women. I heard, once again, on the radio this week all the familiar statistics: that 1 in 4 women will be sexually harassed in their lifetime; 80% of these women will not report it.
At that point, I just got so sad that I had to scoop up Rei in my arms and tell her I wanted to her to grow up to be strong and unafraid. I held her close and apologized for the world that she is living in. And I was almost sorry for bringing her into this mess. Was I being too melodramatic or sensitive? Perhaps. Probably. But I don’t want her to grow up thinking that just because this is how the world is, this is how it always has to be. ...
- a litany of remembrance by Anna Humphrey sent by my CCS learning partner, Michelle
- a commemoration and exhortation by co-blogger Boots
The world will change. Hopefully for the better. It has to.
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