As a father of school age children, I find words to express my thoughts on this week’s tragedy are difficult to conjure. As such, I defer to Lord Tennyson:
STRONG Son of God, immortal Love,Whom we, that have not seen thy face,By faith, and faith alone, embrace,Believing where we cannot prove;
Thine are these orbs of light and shade;Thou madest Life in man and brute;Thou madest Death; and lo, thy footIs on the skull which thou hast made.
Thou wilt not leave us in the dust:Thou madest man, he knows not why,He thinks he was not made to die;And thou hast made him: thou art just.
Thou seemest human and divine,The highest, holiest manhood, thou:Our wills are ours, we know not how;Our wills are ours, to make them thine.
Our little systems have their day;They have their day and cease to be:They are but broken lights of thee,And thou, O Lord, art more than they.
We have but faith: we cannot know;For knowledge is of things we see;And yet we trust it comes from thee,A beam in darkness: let it grow.
Let knowledge grow from more to more,But more of reverence in us dwell;That mind and soul, according well,May make one music as before,
But vaster. We are fools and slight;We mock thee when we do not fear:But help thy foolish ones to bear;Help thy vain worlds to bear thy light.
Forgive what seem’d my sin in me;What seem’d my worth since I began;For merit lives from man to man,And not from man, O Lord, to thee.
Forgive my grief for one removed,Thy creature, whom I found so fair.I trust he lives in thee, and thereI find him worthier to be loved.
Forgive these wild and wandering cries,Confusions of a wasted youth;Forgive them where they fail in truth,And in thy wisdom make me wise.
Requiescat in pace.