October
2006
Shooting the Girls
by Meredith Efken
I don’t think this will be a very coherent post. How can I write rationally and calmly about what sort of perverse rage propels two school shootings in one week? Two shootings targeted at female students. Hugo Schwyzer has a summary and reflections on this, including links to a news article for each.
It’s a violent spill-over of a female-targeted rage that expresses itself in our country in rape, abuse, and other mistreatment of women.
Every. Single. Day.
But this time, in one week, five high school girls paid for this rage with their lives. And several others are still hospitalized. You can’t even play the “blame the victim” game. These girls had nothing to do with their killers. They were innocent. The ones in Colorado were sexually assaulted. The ones in Pennsylvania were bound and executed.
Oh GOD! Can you hear my heart screaming? The Image of God…so divided. So broken. Brothers killing their sisters.
So much hate. So much violence.
Jesus, help us. Show us the way out. Show us how to heal. How to unite. Put the pieces of Your Image back together and make us whole.
Somehow, these tragedies MUST stop.
The Shooting the Girls by Violet Voices, unless otherwise expressly stated, is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.
Written By: Meredith Efken
Posted under: Women's Voices . 
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Amen, Meredith, Amen
As a teacher, every incident like this breaks my heart even more than the last. School should be a safe place. We work so hard at our little school to teach our students to care for each other, to not hurt each other, to see each other as people with God-given dignity, each valuable and important.
We’ve begun to learn how to teach them that, to see the signs of a student whose anger is boiling over, so we can stop them from hurting each other. But what do we do when the violence of the world is invading. Lock the doors and hire security guards? School shouldn’t look like a prison or be a place where we’re afraid of who’s coming in. Students shouldn’t have to be afraid to be here.
I guess we can only pray that this violent world finds its Savior and trust in Him until it does. But that’s so hard to do as I look at these sophomores curled up on the floor with their writing folders and wonder how we’re going to keep them safe….
We have to continue to be outraged. Continue to be vigilant. Continue to raise our voices loud in protest. None of this is acceptable!
Thanks, friends. Did you hear? My husband came home from work today and said that he’d heard on the news or somewhere that the Amish community the girls were part of has decided to reach out to the shooter’s family to help provide them with therapy or whatever other help they need.
I’m just in awe of that sort of beauty and real expression of faith coming out of something so horrific.
yup - I heard that, too, Meredith. A spokesperson for the community wowed someone from the Today show this morning with that information. “Why would you do that?” (paraphrased quotes, here) “Because of compassion” Would that we all acted that way toward those who hurt us.