Words For When I'm Wordless

I'm grasping for words today. What do you write the day after the deadliest shooting in U.S. history? I can barely look at the front page Washington Post photo of the wounded being carried from Norris Hall, an academic building at Virginia Tech, where 30 of the slayings occurred.

I'm not sure if it's disrespectful to even write about it.

So I gathered the quotes that I read when I flunked out of the psych ward (that's really possible), at one of my most desperate times, even though I know not to compare it to the devastation in the hearts of those who have lost a loved one in the Virginia Tech gunfire:

"Truly, it is in the darkness that one finds the light, so when we are in sorrow, then this light is nearest of all to us." –Meister Eckhart

"That you protect me in danger--
this is not my prayer;
Let me not know fear
when in danger.

I do not ask You to comfort me
in the heat of sadness,
in an aching state of mind.
Make me victorious
over sadness.

Let not my strength break down
when I find myself without a refuge.

If I suffer any worldly loss,
if I'm repeatedly frustrated,
let me not consider this harm irreparable.

That You come to save me--
this is not my prayer;
I ask
for strength to overcome.
You need not comfort me
by lightening my load;
I ask for strength
to carry my burden.

On days of joy
with humble head
I will recognize You.
I will recognize You.

On a dark, sad night,
full of frustrations,
O then may I not doubt You!"
-- Rabindranath Tagore

"Go with the pain, let it take you.... Open your palms and your body to the pain. It comes in waves like a tide, and you must be open as a vessel lying on the beach, letting it fill you up and then, retreating, leaving you empty and clear.... With a deep breath--it has to be as deep as the pain—one reaches a kind of inner freedom from pain, as though the pain were not yours but your body's. The spirit lays the body on the altar." –Anne Morrow Lindbergh

"Rubble is the ground on which our deepest friendships are built. If you haven’t already, you will lose someone you can’t live without, and your heart will be badly broken, and you never completely get over the loss of a deeply beloved person. But this is also good news. The person lives forever, in your broken heart that doesn’t seal back up. And you come through, and you learn to dance with the banged-up heart. You dance to the absurdities of life; you dance to the minuet of old friendships." --Anne Lamott

"I love the way in which all the angels of scripture, and Jesus himself on occasion, say to people whom they encounter, "Fear not." At least that is what they say in the King James Version, two simple words that act to obliterate fear, giving the listener the hope that fear's domination of the human heart is subject to God, after all, and its power can be extinguished..... It is an exorcism; as we speak the words, fear itself becomes a "not," a nothing. And in that act of speech, all the complexity of the word "fear" is revealed: yes, it can stymie us, but it can also set us free. It is fear--in the old sense of awe—that allows us to recognize the holy in our midst, fear that gives us the courage to listen, and to let God awaken in us capacities and responsibilities we have been afraid to contemplate." --Kathleen Norris

"It may be that some little root of the sacred tree still lives. Nourish it then, that it may leaf and bloom and fill with singing birds." --Black Elk

"Life is difficult. This is a great truth, one of the greatest truths. It is a great truth because once we truly see this truth, we transcend it. Once we truly know that life is difficult--once we truly understand and accept it--then life is no longer difficult. Because once it is accepted, the fact that life is difficult no longer matters." --M. Scott Peck