A few weeks on...
Reflections on the tragedy at Virginia Tech

Almost three weeks ago now, a terrible event occured on the campus of Virginia Tech, only a few hours south of where I live. As I wrote at the time, it reminded me of the emotions that were aroused five years ago, by a shooting on the campus of the University of Arizona...just a few minutes north of where Melanie and I lived.

There were so many thoughts and emotions the week of the tragedy, but two reflections that have persisted are as follows:

1. The leadership of Governor Tim Kaine
Governor Kaine is somewhat of an anomaly. He is a Democrat who was much more outspoken about the importance of his faith during the campaign than the Republican candidate. But it wasn't his political stances that struck me in the aftermath of the shootings. I was struck by how this political leader was speaking - even to the media - as a loving Dad, grieving with other parents. Listening to this interview with Kaine I almost cried to hear him recount his interactions with grieving parents, at least one of whom had lost their only child. How this country (and world) needs more leaders like that.

2. Representations of the shooter's identity
A piece by Robert Seagal of NPR was what I had been waiting all week to hear! Attending a church with a large proportion of Korean Americans that meets in Centreville, VA, only minutes from the killer's childhood home, the shooter's identity was particularly relevant to our thoughts and prayers.

Seagal's piece referred to international headlines that identified the shooter as "Korean" as being "evidence of yet another way that people who don’t know this country don’t get this country." He applauded a Washington Post headline that identified Cho as a local. He spoke about how Cho moved here when he was eight, went to public schools in Northern Virginia, and attended a university where there are many other Asian students. Cho's disturbing ideas, expressed in plays and other writings, were "the stuff of [American] newspapers and culture." His ability to buy a gun reflected "an American interprettation of liberty. An idea which, if not unique to us, is no Asian import." The conclusion of the story was most poignant (and, I think, accurate) "like the kids who murdered at Columbine [Cho] lived and died as one of us."

I've got more reflecting to do on all of this...I still feel passionately it's important for us not to forget the brokenness of our world that is brought into stark relief by events like this.