they say you should not
look directly
at the sun
ignoring the real possibility
that it is the night
that has already
blinded us
To the scared, cold,
Ordinary child
In each photograph
Owned by
This oddball monster
While the dying sun,
Claw-handed scribe, failing light,
Scribbles justicejusticejusticejusticejusticejusticejusticejusticejusticejusticejusticejusticejustice…justicejusticejustice
Into one kind of eternity
Or another
Easter morning.
The sun rises on a rolling hill in New Braunfels as worshippers gather to celebrate the Resurrection of Jesus.
Yet as the dawn Christians worship, a savage domestic drama unfolds within yards of the sanctuary.
Felix Antonio Nieves, seventeen years old, dies as the result of what news sources have described as a protracted domestic argument.
The accounts of the last moments of Nieves’ life describe multiple weapons–stun guns, a pistol, and the shotgun used to end his life.
What is shocking about this story?
7:15 on Easter morning?
The quiet neighborhood?
The proximity to a church?
Or the knowledge neighbors have that their neighbors include law enforcement officers? That this is a neighborhood where people might feel safer because some of their own neighbors are officers of the peace?
Or again, that this neighborhood is within a mile or two of a police station?
Maybe. But what shocks me is that in a protracted story of domestic violence, no one called for police intervention until a murder had already been committed.
What does that say about Texas? About us? About justice?
We should call the police before we load and shoot a gun.
Why didn’t they? Why did no one call the police until it was too late to save one family from irrevocable tragedy?
The answers might surprise us all…if we were brave enough to face them.
So much noise lately–first Mark Ruffalo lends his voice to the pro-abortionist cacophony, then Miley Cyrus lends that and a bunch of other body parts to our monkeys-on-display culture.
I have not and will not watch the Miley display. Poor girl. But I have read the Ruffalo letter and found it remarkably resonant to both situations.
Ruffalo describes his mother’s abortion as
“traumatizing…shameful, and sleazy, and demeaning.”
He is right. All abortion is traumatizing, shameful, sleazy, and demeaning.
There are plenty of places where prostitution is legal, but there is no place on the planet where it is anything but “traumatizing, shameful, sleazy, and demeaning.”
A point Ms. Cyrus has just proved rather infamously on a public stage in front of millions of people.
Abortion, prostitution, and this much publicized burlesque–so much in common, and none of it–none of it–raises the dignity of women.
You can make a great many immoral acts legal–SCOTUS has proved this over the course of the years, but no matter how legal a thing is, if it ever was “traumatizing, shameful, sleazy, and demeaning”…it still is.
When OJ Simpson was on trial for murder I worked in an elementary school in a poor, urban area. Most of my colleagues were African American.
We huddled around the tv at lunch to see what was going on. I remember the day of the verdict. Most of my fellow teachers cheered as though their football team had won.
I wondered–
where was justice?
I really doubt that many of them actually thought Simpson was not guilty. What they thought was
life is not fair for black men in America.
It isn’t.
And now we see it not being fair again. We see justice again faltering–this time the victim is African American and the team cheering is white.
This is not a football game.
It is not right for any of us to be so blinded by the outside of another person’s life that we rejoice in their pain, their murder, or their injustice.
Do not tell me God is in charge in the world today if He is not in charge of your heart.
When we bay for blood, hate, and bottled feces in a world shot through with agony and loss we prove we know nothing about love.
And make no mistake. God is not our little Santa Claus, He is not the captain of the white folk football team.
He is love and He is coming soon, with justice in His strong right arm.
That should make us all pray hard. Because not not one of us is holy.
Not one.
Elealee's Blog 