A Sorrowful Eastertide

Eight blasts across Sri Lanka have killed at least 207 people and injured hundreds of others, prompting the government to impose a nationwide curfew and block social media https://t.co/JiV0FVevhn pic.twitter.com/kySWVmFAnC

— CNN International (@cnni) April 22, 2019

This Holy Week saw the partial destruction of a magnificent historical Christian structure due to an act of bad wiring and fate, and ends with an horrific act of violence across Sri Lanka, where eight blasts (and other, secreted devices have been found) have resulted in the deaths of more than two hundred people, and the wounding of hundreds more. I can only express my shared sorrow for the enormity of this assault on worshippers, travelers, and fellow humans, all underserving of such horror intersecting with their lives, and hope that justice is delivered to those who meant to express some political viewpoint (one can but assume) with blood.

If this does not in some way desecrate the meaning of this day for the faithful, I would state that there is no way the blood of the innocent ever pays for any other, dislocated guilt, of trespassers against human rights or thoughtless elites whose activities grind others down through multiple transgressions against their health, pocket, and general welfare. These human lives, abruptly changed, whether for death or disability, and the disruption of the lives of their nearest and dearest ones, will only answer to the horror of the act, and not any intention on the part of the terrorists, because terror is senseless. It speaks to nothing but babbles in fire and sound and blood. It is a sign of the exhaustion of reason, not the beginning of any rational conversation. It deafens and numbs and blinds by scattering grief and hurt.

This attack was appalling, and reminds us that human lives are often wasted for any number of reasons, when for all, life is already short enough and marked with sorrow. We wait on a day when we sort out this gross failure to see the human in one another, and acknowledge the life journey and struggle for knowledge everyone of us shares.

But until all humanity learns better how not to create more grief, I sit in grief with Sri Lanka and the many other nations from which these victims had come. Our mortality and its recognition brings us all, believer and nonbeliever alike, to a dreadful contemplation. Our only comfort is one another, and if all I can do is suffer with you--I do.