Lawrence Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com
And for What?
In
the midst of a world of light and love, of song and feast and dance, he [Satan]
could find nothing more interesting to think of than his own prestige.
-C. S. Lewis, A Preface to Paradise Lost, p. 96
Many cultures follow the lunar calendar rather than the
solar, which is interesting and enlightening. In Viet-Nam the lunar new year is
called Tet Nguyen Dan, which means the first day of the new year. Tet is not
only the new lunar year for Vietnamese, it is also the first day of spring and
everyone’s birthday (Tet Holiday: The Age-Old Tradition Explained | Vietcetera).
Good fun for everyone as another strengthening strand in our national tapestry.
Not all who observe the lunar year do so in exactly the
same way, but it is always an occasion for merriment and gratitude.
Unfortunately, there are those who resent parties and
feasts and dances and cookouts and families and friends simply sitting outside on
a summer night talking or playing dominos while the rug-rats chase lightnin’
bugs across the lawn. Each happy custom or tradition, a “ceremony of innocence,”
as Yeats would say, arouses in some unhappy souls resentment instead of joy.
Last weekend a man unhappy with his life chose to take a pistol
and destroy the lives and hopes of innocent people who were dancing the old
year out and the new year in. To paraphrase Lewis, on an evening of light,
love, song, feast, and dance which he could have joined this man focused only
on his own self-pity.
We can’t really know what was in his mind, but we know the
man got angry – okay, let’s make that down-home plain – a man got mad. He left
home with a gun to take his mad out on people. We need to learn the lesson - that
can never end well for anyone. He killed and hurt innocent folks just because
he was mad at… Mad at what? And then he ended
his own life slumped over the steering wheel of a van in a parking lot.
That’s no way to live.
That’s no way to die.
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