This is a Virginia based blog, so the Virginia Tech tragedy hits a little too close to home.  I’ve never been to Blacksburg, but I know several Hokies personally.  As for this blog, it has been visited several times from the Virginia Tech campus.  All I can do is offer my thoughts and prayers to those who have been given great cause to mourn this day. 

In the coming days there will be much made of the massacre which took place in one of the least likely locations.  There will be many who will attempt to dissect the psyche of the shooter to ascertain his motivation for taking so many lives in so brutal a fashion.  Its not America’s most redeeming quality, but as we learned so well yesterday, people will do what people will do. 

None of the pontifications – political or otherwise – will change the very grim and painful reality which now grips the campus of Virginia Tech and indeed the attention of the nation.  Reality is there are 32 families who lost loved ones yesterday.  32 mothers, fathers, sisters, and brothers were taken suddenly and violently.  Nothing that is said or written here or through any other medium can change that reality. 

I often find solace and comfort in music, so I’ll share with you parts of two hymns which may bring peace to those souls who grieve this day: 

Where can I turn for peace?
Where is my solace when other sources cease to make me whole?
When with a wounded heart, anger or malice I draw myself apart searching my soul?
Where when my aching grows, where when I languish, where in my need to know, where can I run?
Where is the quiet hand to calm my anguish?
Who, who can understand? He, only One.
He answers privately, reaches my reaching in my Gethsemane, Savior and Friend.
Gentle the peace he finds for my beseeching.
Constant he is and kind, Love with out end.
- Where Can I Turn For Peace by Emma Lou Thane 

And finally, a few somewhat modified stanzas from some seldom sung verses of a seldom sung hymn: 

There is no end to glory.
There is no end to love.
There is no end to union.
There is no death above.
- W.W. Phelps

A few weeks ago the world celebrated Easter.  Easter is a celebration of life beyond this mortal sphere and at times like these I take comfort in knowing the tomb is empty.