Our Lady's Tears — Marilyn Lamoreux Photography

Little did I know when I picked a bunch of beautiful lily of the valley flowers yesterday that today their symbolism would be so appropriate. In the world of flower meanings, lily of the valley flowers are thought to symbolize

Our Lady’s Tears

It is believed that these flowers rose after Mary’s tears touched the ground as her son was being crucified.

…

In the Bible, the flower signified Eve’s tears for her banishment from the Garden of Eden.

— Lily of the Valley Flower, Meaning and Symbolism

I too, felt like shedding tears today over yet another senseless mass killing at an elementary school yesterday. This morning I imagined how I would feel being the parent of a school child today and as I sent my child off to school. It was beyond my imagination. If I had children in school at this time I think I would be seriously working on figuring out a way to home school them.

Our two grandchildren have both experienced terrifying school lock-downs this school year. And though the lock-downs turned out to be false alarms, I vividly remember the lightning bolt of fear I felt when my daughter called for support as she waited to hear what was going on at my grandson’s high school on the day of the lock-down. Every child, school employee, and parent is traumatized and afraid. And I think every caring, thinking person in our society is also feeling traumatized and afraid.

There are no easy answers to this problem that has been getting worse decade by decade in our country. Solving the increasing violence is a complex problem. It’s not just about the proliferation of guns in our country, though guns are a big part of the problem. I think it is also a crisis of loss of meaning, connection, and a sense of agency.

Every year
everything
I have ever learned

in my lifetime
leads back to this: the fires
and the black river of loss
whose other side

is salvation,
whose meaning
none of us will ever know.

To live in this world

you must be able
to do three things:
to love what is mortal;
to hold it

against your bones knowing
your own life depends on it;
and, when the time comes to let it go,
to let it go.

— Mary Oliver, excerpt from Blackwater Woods

Please Be Kind

I don’t want to dwell on this any longer here today except to ask everyone to please be kind to one another. Though we don’t have answers perhaps we can try to connect with one person who might be hurting. And we can smile at one another, listen to one another, and share stories of hope and resilience. Small actions taken many times, connecting with one another, spending time in nature—these are all I know to do to turn the tide.

Ah, world, what lessons you prepare for us,
even in the leafless winter,
even in the ashy city.
I am thinking now
of grief, and of getting past it;

I feel my boots
trying to leave the ground,
I feel my heart
pumping hard. I want

to think again of dangerous and noble things.
I want to be light and frolicsome.
I want to be improbable beautiful and afraid of nothing,
as though I had wings.

— Mary Oliver, excerpt from Starlings in Winter

Spread love. Spread kindness. Be the light in dark places.

May you walk in beauty.