"There's no sense in trying to deal with the dying" , Bob Dylan once sang and at this season and at this time, following the mindless slaughter of 26 people, many children, perpetrated on Friday, December 14th, the words ring truer than ever. But there is a sense for us, the unwilling bystanders,being able to deal with it, particularly at Christmas and particularly if you are a Christian at Christmas.
The truth is, the only thing that can really deal with it is faith in a God, in a deeper meaning somewhere and somehow. Dylan never could make sense of the dying, of the wastefulness of life, until he became Born Again. With a bedrock of faith in a life everlasting the tragedy, without narrowing fits into a larger picture, but no larger than this: First Grade Teacher Victoria Soto, 27 years old, died when she threw herself in the path of the gunman's bullets to protect her student. Certainly, in this world there is nothing more important than Ms. Soto's sacrifice. There is nothing to point more clearly to a life after death than this. Indeed, whether or not there is a life after death, Soto's sacrifice is the definition of a soul everlasting.
The thing is, if life is a lesson, Soto's actions, as are Jesus' actions, is the opposite of what we sometimes feel we are as a species. In the mindless rush of life we appear to be simple receptacles of outside stimula: we lose our inner tick tock, our soul, in just the constant pressure of being alive, so what Soto's actions does is remind us that we are indeed bigger than what we think we are. To give your life for your student is more difficult to grasp than murdering children for no reason. The latter, whether we will it or not, seems to fit into the 21st Century lack of peace, the former is peace as self-sacrifice, it is the instinct to the greatest good and in this story is it where God lies.
I write this as an agnostic at best (I am certainly not a Christian) but you don't have to believe in God to believe in Soto's God like death. In giving her life in an attempt to save these children she changed the paradigm of the story (again, for us, nothing changes it for the family though Faith may help). On the face of it, this is the story of mindless rage destroying our most innocent. But it isn't really. The mindless rage bit is really nothing, it is the nature of existence. The story is Soto's story. She is our hero. She helps Christians and all people of faith or without faith make sense of it. Because she changes it, and in changing the story from simple tragedy to the triumph of bravery and love over what is as close to pure evil as you will ever find, she gives those of us affected, even if only by proximity, the moral fortitude, the straight backed bravery, to deal with not just the tragedy of 20 children between the ages of 6 and 7, being slaughtered, but also the implicit tragedy of our own lives and fears.
If this tragedy had to happen, let it happen at Christmas. Let it remind the world of the true meaning of the Season whatever our belief and whoever we are. Christmas is a non-denominational holiday not solely because retailers demand it but also because its message of a a sacrifice for a life eternal speaks to all of us. And so it is Christmas… and in the middle of tragedy we watched the Christ story played again and saved us from only feeling pain