When you mess with a runner...

It has been three days since some maladjusted, vengeful, hate-filled person dropped off a package full of evil at the finish line of the Boston marathon. 

I'm running out of things to say about the darkness that can reside in the human spirit and the power we have to overcome it.  I'm tired of trying to think profound thoughts about how we can rise above, about how God weeps with us, about how the hands and feet of Jesus rush in.  It is all true, I believe these things, but there have been too many events, too many sadnesses on the national front, too much violence against bystanders and non-combatants and children.  I'm tired of hearing my own semi-profundity. 

This time I'm just mad.  Pissed, actually.  Tantrum-inducing, desk-beating, screaming at the computer ANGRY.  I'm keeping my choicest words to myself because I don't need to get my blog an r-rating for language. And I'm really glad I'm not schedule to preach this weekend because my poor parishioners might get an undeserved face full of white-hot unglorious furiosity.

I wonder (though I doubt) if I'm the only one who is experiencing this kind of weariness of meaning-making? 

These travesties of human evil keep hitting closer and closer to home.  I know, as many of my good friends do, that feeling of crossing the finish line at mile 26.2.  It was, for me, a fascinating experience of simultaneous great personal triumph and the humility of total depletion.  I used everything I had--every ounce of physical strength-- to accomplish a great feat of will.  I remember thinking that I was a member of a very small portion of the human population that could accomplish something so personal, so individual and do it entirely on my own.

And to see that video, with the marathon clock ticking along the 4 hour mark, watching runners so close to that goal knocked over in a blast of fire and smoke... well. White-hot unglorious furiosity. 

There are plenty of other things in the Boston debacle to be livid about and myriad others to weep about (8 years old, dear Lord.).  I've run all of them through the loop in my brain that obsesses over these things.  But I can so viscerally connect with the glory of the finish line and all that it stands for, now translated into yet another crime scene, yet another symbol of fear and violence.

Makes me want to go train for another marathon.