A Storm Rolled Through

 I have been on vacation this past week.  One of my Franciscan friends lives in CT and we made plans to spend a day together. There was time for me to pay my respects in Sandy Hook today.

Off the route 84 exit for Newtown I took the left marked for Sandy Hook. A chill came over me as I was entering a school zone and I saw the orange cones blocking entrance to a long driveway. I stopped and noticed that someone else was walking ahead and had stopped at a collection of flowers and a children's book.

The fireman across the street was working on his truck and confirmed that that was where people paid their respects and that the school was closed and off limits.

I stopped again, knelt and prayed for all children and then slowly drove out of town, admiring it for its sweet New England landscape. The stores with 'we choose love' signs in their windows. It reminded me of storm damage left behind. The terror, a memory of the impersonal blast of havoc that blows through, leaving wreckage.

The storm is just the storm. It doesn't care that it uproots and mangles bodies or trees. It might catch you, it might miss you. It's all the same to the storm, power and might rolling through.