Like a day trip gone wrong, I slid into a bit of depression the other day. I try not to do this, and I am wondering if my attention to the news is what is giving me a problem.
It was a bit of a jolt to read over at Maxed Out Mama’s about a schoolground attack that happend in the Columbus Ohio school district. It is just now hitting the news here…. and bloggers were on it, and it happened about two weeks ago or so. That smacks of colusion to damp the news, doesn’t it? It did to me. I had to do some online searching to come up with the info. It is about something that we should find depressing- a real deterioration in the general moral sense of people.
That is the only explanation I have right now for why we are seeing this. It is something like that ‘wilding’ attack that happened to a jogger in NY some years back. A seemingly unexplainable glitch in the way you think civilized people act. How is it that some schools are a petrie dish for the foulest breaches of morality- is it that their prison-like atmospheres cultivate prison-mate mentality? Right now I don’t know. I’m turning it over in my mind.
The guilt of the school administrators in charge is undeniable and they are being temporarily disciplined. They viewed a tape of the attack and still declined to call the authorities, and further tried to dissuade the father from getting the proper help. Shame on them.
Then…last night… I watched ‘Hotel Rwanda’. I was always upset by the events of that time, but I remember it being on the heels of some very hurtful intervening that we did do…. even now I cannot see the U.S. as being the only policeman of all the world’s troubles and hotspots. It is depressing that I have no answer to gear towards, nothing that I can say, yes, that is the policy that I support. I’m like.”I sure hope someone knows what this country should do- and is making wise decisions in foreign policy”.
I support President Bush, and generally feel he made the right decisions, although I never felt real confident about the speed in which we entered the Iraq conflict. But we are there now… and all second guessing is pretty futile, I think. It is mroe a matter of where we are now going.
But the tragedy of places like Rwanda, the Balkans…it tears me up inside and makes me so depressed. I am tempted to think that the Devil is ruling and we are helpless…although I know better.
I do know better, I do know that God is greater and that we have spiritual weapons of warfare. But my hands just hang down, you know? Where is my faith?
I was reading something encouraging over at As I See It Now where she was talking about encouragers being out to lunch. It centered around this verse:””But David encouraged and strengthened himself in the Lord” …I Sam. 30:6 ”
She also remarks on brain overload leading to sadness…she could have been talking about me- I identify. My trouble is that I have never felt that feeling peace is worth staying away from the ‘land of complication’. Sometimes I truly feel that I am wrong about that. But for whatever reason, the peculiar constituents that make up me or whatever, I have found that turning to God irons everything out for me, that will bring the peace and clarify the complications.
But in this blog… I am afraid I am working things out on paper so to speak. I am trying to relate with others out there who are grappling with some of the same things. It is all so complicated in form, I just hope it resolves into something more lucid.
How did you like the movie?
I thought it was extremely well-done. My kids were watching it with me, and initially I was afraid it was going to be gory, given the circumstances, but I thought that the streamlined symbolic handling gave the horror without the gore. Especially when Paul stumbles out of the van to fall into the nightmarish road of bodies.
I think it was an artistic coup to get across the message with representative scenes like that.
Although to tell the truth my instincts are that the reality was so much more horrible than what was in the movie. The characters were all played well, but none were true villians, which maybe was a mistake.
There usually are true villians in that sort of circumstance. Although we don’t want to look at ourselves as capable of that level of atrocity.
I still think Schindler’s List was a better movie of similar content and story, but Hotel Rwanda was worthwhile viewing.