News and Hope.

“‘Hang on to your hopes, my friend’: That’s an easy thing to say, but if your hopes should pass away, simply pretend that you can build them again.”
–Simon & Garfunkel, “Hazy Shade of Winter”

On Monday, a co-worker and I make a vow to not read the news until the beginning of the new year. The Oregon days of late have been dark and foggy, and the florescent-lighted office is gloomy in the face of impending lay-offs. In the break room, Valerie folds up the newspaper with a sigh and decides with sudden clarity that she is going to simply ignore it. I agree, stirring the caffeinated battery acid in my mug and deciding that a news blackout sounds rather lovely.

Even with all our best intentions, our other co-workers and the world around us make our ignorance impossible. On Tuesday afternoon, Travis returns to his cubicle from his daily walk with the first bit of news in our news-less week, of a shooting at the local mall. Melancholy, I lock myself inside my car in the evening while I wait for my gas tank to be filled. The eerie fog closes in around, leaving the world pitch black. I hear the voices of gas station attendants, mingled with the distant sound of sirens and helicopters. The freeways are shut down. I inch along in the middle lane, shivering, praying.

On Thursday, there is a fire at the local pet store, and many furry lives are lost. Valerie is the first to learn of this story, through work-related business. We sigh, wistful. I hate this week, I mention. It’s the whole “end of the world” thing, says Travis. People are going crazy. He decides to stay inside for a long time–in case something does happen next week, he makes plans to come to the office, to the department we work in, which is situated in a highly secure building behind three locked doors.

I don’t believe the world will end, I say. But for too many this week, the world has ended already.

And today. I don’t have words for the news story Travis provides for me this morning. To think of those children…that senseless massacre…my mind can handle what my body can’t, and I am physically ill.

My melancholy mind descends into all sorts of darkness, and I briefly wonder, in the night, as I gaze up at the rare, clear sky full of stars, if the world really will end. I watch Orion and his loyal canine and wonder where God is. Christmas is near–the world is usually cheerful in this month, and my mind wanders to Jesus and I remember his story. The world was not cheerful when he was born: much of it was in chaos, and the country Jesus was born in was under oppression. Its tyrannical leader, through selfish concern for his political position after astronomical events surrounding Jesus’ birth, ordered the massacre of all small children in the area, with the hopes that Jesus would be among the casualties.

I think about that town, their questioning and their grief, how hopeless it all seemed. This horrific evil was an enormous red dragon, sweeping a third of the stars from the sky with its tail, the apostle John wrote later. But in the darkest days of the world there was hope, waiting to be realized. “The dragon stood in front of the woman who was about to give birth, so that it might devour her child the moment he was born,” John continued with his version of the incident in Revelation 12. “She gave birth to a son, a male child, who ‘will rule all the nations with an iron scepter.’ And her child was snatched up to God and to his throne. The woman fled to the wilderness to a place prepared for her by God, where she might be taken care of for 1,260 days.”

I think also of Isaiah’s words, and how they later came to be, and are still coming into being.

“For to us a child is born,
to us a son is given,
and the government will be on his shoulders.
And he will be called
Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God,
Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.
Of the greatness of his government and peace
there will be no end.”

I read this to comfort myself, and perhaps it will be a comfort to someone else.

I try to read this bit of news often, and should remember it more than I have lately. And for now, it is the weekend, and all other sources of current news are finally out of my reach.