Category Archives: murder of the innocent

Jyoti Singh Pandey

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I stand in honor of this young woman and her grieving family. Like many mothers all over the world I grieve with them and all Indians who are dismayed and outraged that any woman or girl anywhere in the world is in danger–on a bus, on the street, at a party, in a police station, in a hospital.

We who are not Indian should take careful note–the way we react to protect the vulnerable in our culture can, will, and should define us.

Forever.
In honor of her death we all must do better.

Her family is in my prayers
I pray for justice.

Breaking and entering!!!

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Remember I left this story at trespassing.. Let’s see what happens next…

Mark 2:3-4 (NIV)
Some men came, bringing to him a paralytic, carried by four of them. [4] Since they could not get him to Jesus because of the crowd, they made an opening in the roof above Jesus and, after digging through it, lowered the mat the paralyzed man was lying on.

Huh…. Breaking and entering?!! Destruction of property?!? This story gets more violent and illegal by the minute.

And what does Jesus do? More calls to the po-po? Vigilante justice?

Nope…

Mark 2:5 (NIV)
When Jesus saw their faith, he said to the paralytic, “Son, your sins are forgiven.”

I once preached a sermon on this passage. My daughter’s favorite part was when I said that we neglect the violent, intrusive nature of what the men did breaking through the roof of the house

…but it turns out ok because luckily, there was a carpenter in it.

I can obsess over the damage we fallen, messy humans can unleash on each other. The truth is Jesus: fixer, healer, resurrectionist.

He rises from hell to save us.
The messy rest is a cakewalk for him.
Roof repair and all.

Memorial Words

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The words are familiar, the voices quavering–

a table before mine enemies

Psalm 23 at the memorial for children who should have been safe at school.. What do we do with our grief? With Christmas? With all those presents for the fallen?

I have been praying for the Krims. I knew this holiday season would be terribly hard for them. Now I have this image in my mind–20 homes without their babies.

I keep thinking-they were six, they were six, they were just little.

Yes. I know some were seven. Seven years is long enough to fall in love with a bright light in the world and long enough to know that the dark has grown darker with each light extinguished.

These people will never be the same.
We should never be the same.

Yes. I know that each death hurts and the hurt is the more unrelenting because it was so cruel.

Cruel. Cruel like our enemies. Cruel like Herod ordering the murder of babies. A king who murders children?
This table set for us in the presence of…

Our enemies.
Chief among them, death itself.

We forget sometimes that the baby in the manger is the Man on the cross.

In the presence of our enemies.
He dies
To set this table where light cannot be snuffed out–
No matter what
Heaven

A History of Violence

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Yesterday an entire community woke up feeling safe and went to bed knowing the truth–no one is safe.

When we examine mass killings in America the list is chilling without the quotidian descriptions of domestic murders. When I read these articles on our history of violence what struck me was how incomplete the lists were.

I found several articles but none mentioned the tragedy at the Amish schoolhouse several years ago. The story of a methodical murder of children at school? Worth remembering.

And now we have Sandy Hook. I hate these stories. Most of us do. But what I find almost as disturbing is how quickly we go back to our Christmas parties and meme gathering.

Sometimes it does seem as though we are more pro-active about spreading urban legends than the truth.

I understand our desire to play the numbers–immediately after the tragedy I heard and read several reporters say–these events are rare.

I seem to have missed the bend in history when the NRA needed more public advocacy than school children.

We have a big problem. A deadly,escalating association between power and slaughter, the desire to exact a terrible revenge on children and the need for fame?

Can it be that our culture of entertainment violence has collided with real violence and a quest for celebrity? Do any of us dare face the possibility that this is the monster we have created? Nurtured? Then allowed to roam our schools, malls, concerts and cinemas while we idly click our remotes looking for something to distract us from a gathering darkness?

Toddler Mauled by Wild Dogs

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The story is haunting, devastating, nightmarish–a little boy is killed when he falls into a wild dog exhibit.

I grieve for the family.

And I say we must treat this as a preventable death.

There should have been a secondary safety barrier between the railing and the ground.

Any able bodied adult attending the exhibit should have immediately called 911 and alerted zoo officials.

And yes, we ordinary citizens need to expect that it is our job to insert ourselves between a baby and a pack of wild dogs.

I know I am asking for heroism. And I know this is a rare occurrence (thank God)–but one we must examine closely.

The wiki link above says that these dogs have an 80-90% kill rate. 2/3rds higher than lions. They hunt in communicating packs and will run prey down. They are extremely aggressive and work together.

And here is the terrible irony–these dogs were raised by an ordinary domesticated dog. The Pittsburgh zoo brought her in to nurse the wild pups in 2009.

They were raised in that zoo.
Did the zoo cultivate their predatory hunting skills? I don’t know.

But I do know that they are deadly. The wild African dogs hunt to sustain the life of their pack.

Human predators have no such excuse for the terrible things they do.

To keep our kids safe we must educate ourselves about the animals that live so close to defenseless children.

My prayers remain with this little one’s family.

stats on dog attacks

Dear Krim Family

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My heart aches for you. I know your lives have been thrown into the darkest tunnel. You are constantly in my thoughts and prayers. Words fail.

There is an Old Testament story that keeps coming to my mind. A woman whose family was executed to stop a war sits over the bodies of her loved ones warding of the birds.

It is one of the bleakest images of grief–all that remains is her lonely figure on a hilltop. I wish I could ward off the birds of memory seething around you and your beautiful, heartbroken family.

May my words be like hands
Warding off the birds

Jessica Ridgeway, Child Abuse, and Abortion

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If you were able to go back to the language of the original abortion debate circa 1973, you might be surprised at the language people used. One key term stands out–child. Another is baby. Baby and child were the terms used in the 1960s and 70s to describe the victims of abortion. They were not called fetuses (which is a Latin word for “little one”)

They were, to people on both sides of the argument–human babies.

Now, 30 years later, the dismal, dehumanizing effects of abortion have begun to be evident in the crimes against children our society sees now.

I say sees now, but I mean looks the other way.

I know this because it has happened to my children as well as precious children like Toryn Buckman or Jessica Ridgeway. When children are the victims of crime people do not want to read, see, or feel the agony that comes with abuse. As a child advocate I have been told by pediatricians and social workers to shut up.. Talking about this makes people uncomfortable.
The fundamental issue in abortion is only wanted children have value
That means the unwanted ones….(still have value, we just refuse to acknowledge it). A baby conceived by rape is still a valuable human being. Same with girls in general. Same with Down’s babies. All of us have the same priceless measure in the eyes of God.

But for 30 years we have been convincing ourselves that millions of beautiful children aren’t valuable.

Not true.

It has created a deadly lapse in our collective thinking. We would rather blame the parents of crime victims for what has been done to them. We would rather believe it could not happen to us. They made a fatal mistake we will avoid– we will make more money, live in the right place, our kids will be smarter than theirs.

None of this is logical nor does it keep our children safe.

If we are ever to make our country safe again for our children we must see all children as precious– more precious than our jobs, cellphones, free time. And most of all–more precious than our lethal complacency.

9-11 and Jessica Ridgeway

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Imagine for a second planning a plane trip on September 1st 20001. Think about the beverages and nail clippers you would have blithely stowed in your carry-on luggage.

You would not have had to remove your shoes! You also would have had no fears of homicidal acts of terror. The world changes, we have to face its incipient danger.

I mention 9-11 because we all acknowledge that a balance has to be struck between personal freedom and public safety. None of us wants a world constricted by fear.

That being said, it is time to acknowledge that we are failing our children and ourselves. When our children cannot walk to school in safety we have failed our children. When our children are being lured and snatched in front of schools, hospitals, and libraries in daylight we have failed our children. When one child is lost in one of these cases it should be a cause of universal mourning and rapprochement. It is time for a change.

Parents need to face that law enforcement and “living in a safe place” will not keep our children from harm. We need to look at what predators do and how they think. None of us want to, but we must.

Predators

Live everywhere and if they don’t live close to you, they have cars
Watch children
Monitor patterns of movement
May record and photograph children
Maintain contact with other predators, gaining support and information from others
Have no conscience
Will resort to violence to get what they want
Will lie about everything
Monitor/keep track of what children believe and respond to
Disguise themselves well
Volunteer or work at jobs that give them contact with children
Fool people around them
And are fueled as much by anger as by sexual impulses

Not a fun list, but we must face it. And we have to face the fact that most predators do not get caught or reported. They are “us” and pride themselves on the deception.

They benefit when we ignore them. So let’s not.

And we have to keep our children safe. Many of us remember great freedom when we were young. That freedom is no longer safe. Adults need to stay with children outside all the time. We cannot assume a short walk to school or a park is safe. It is not.

We need to face the hard stories of loss and learn from them. Elizabeth Smart was forcibly abducted by a day laborer. Jaycee Dugard was snatched by a married couple who had tracked her and planned her kidnapping with great detail. Jessica Ridgeway was taken on a short walk to school.

if you are a parent you have to face these stories to keep your child safe.

And we have to teach our children:

If a grown up offers you candy from a vehicle
scream and run for help
No adult needs your help finding a puppy
scream and run
never go anywhere with an adult you don’t know/strong>

We need to give our children permission to defend themselves. We need to teach them self defense and also strategies for escape if the worst happens. And we have to talk about the unthinkable. Our children are irreplaceable. We have to keep them safe. Knowledge is power.

in the words of a predator

The borrowed child

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I once borrowed
A child/you could say
Lent.
She was lent to me
Because
her mother was a drug addict…I believed in the system…believed a caseworker…needed infinite
Light

This is not a poem.

She held the world in her eyes
And all the treasure I could have
Begged, borrowed, stolen
I would have traded for her

My in-between child

The little boy whose mother is a chalk angel
Lying beneath
The chaos of war

The little girl who believes the old man in the white car
Who does not really ever
Need her help to find a puppy

The baby glued to a wall
Broken like a vase on the hard stones
Another woman
Laid down on the floor

she would have been a good mother…

Monster.
It is the thing we call
A person who could do that to a child

My baby

He pulls the crystal bowl
Out as I am turned askew
Aside
Asunder

His father viewed this as s trinket
And did not hide it away
High where it could not be reached

Shatters in an instant
And we both
Stand amidst the shards

I say
It is not fair

And scoop him into arms
His siblings distract him from the wreckage

And I sweep up the mess.
Put poultices on the ground

Pretending for a moment
That there is a magic word
For love
Stronger than
Caustic
Glue

Girl
I would reach you
With my arms if I could
With my words if I must
Like walking on water
If I have to…

Resort to prayer.

Eclipse of Light

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It was a solar eclipse
Splashing darkness
Across half the earth
Like a child stretching his blanket
Across the bare
Wood staircase–
Upstairs young man!
His mother admonishes

Never realizing
His life is the smallest
Gossamer thread

From her life to mine

They say
if you try
To look
Directly into the sun
During an eclipse
Seek professional help

Do they mean scientists or
Psychology?

I won’t know.

I just
Know
That staring
Straight into the
Face of God himself
Is impossible hubris
Unless…
The shadow of the Cross
Shields the mortal
Eye