How is it that a 2 minute and 52 second speech in a service of tragic remembrance impelled people to do a football cheer?
“Boy did we need that!” said the Convocation Emcee. Yes we did.
But what was the ‘that’? Without doubt the University President, the Governor, the clergy and even the President of the United States spoke directly from broken hearts…but those words and that authority didn’t do it; didn’t seem to give us a ‘that’ as appreciated as their words clearly were.
Did it take a small fiery woman filled with angry eloquence? That’s who it was but that wasn’t it. An African American with delightfully bleached hair who knows how to wrap words around her soul? Again yes and no. Did it take poetry rather than prose; words that sung their way directly to our hearts? Maybe.
“We are sad today and we will be sad for quite a while. We are not moving on. We are embracing our mourning.”
Others talked about healing and dealing with, but not Nikki Giovanni. No, she insisted with a raised fist, we’re going to stand right here smack in the middle of all the bullets and enhale every last barb of hurt. We are not moving on.
“We are strong enough to stand tall tearlessly. We are brave enough to bend to cry and sad enough to know we must laugh again.” Strong and stand, brave and bend, sad and laugh. What place does such instruction come from?
I sat in the barber’s chair watching this, trying to disguise tears with a yawn or the pretence of wiping cut hair from my eyes. “We do not understand this tragedy; we know we did nothing to deserve it.” She’s so right; I don’t understand much of anything these days.
To inoculate us against self-pity she points us to the daily tragedies that befall children and baby elephants – innocents all who like those fallen and wounded of Virginia Tech do nothing to deserve their tragedies. “No one deserves a tragedy.”
The awful truth is we are already inoculated against tragedy at least until it falls on our own innocence. Why is it we forget so soon after tragedy that we must keep reaching out to each other with heart and hands and souls?
Seeing something we couldn’t see in the moment she assured us all that “We are strong and brave and innocent and unafraid.” That’s what I want to be, I thought as Arthur held up the mirror for me to see his work. “We are better than we think and not quite what we want to be. We are alive to the imagination and the possibility. We will continue to invent the future through our blood and tears, through all this sadness.”
In the middle of whatever tragedy you and I have faced, are facing or are about to face what or who is that can pull a football cheer from our hearts? We are all Virginia Tech at some point in our lives. It’s not a matter of weighing one tragedy against another as though there is a prize. On whomever tragedy falls it is simply tragedy.
In New Orleans this past Saturday I was driven through the wake of Katrina and saw the waterlines and the holes in roofs clawed through by those desperate to survive. The sadness of the place still hangs like a wet mold. Did anyone give those innocents a ‘that’ that made them cheer through their tears?
What does it take to give us the ‘thats’ we so desperately need when we have been emptied of everything else?
I couldn’t help but go to the words of poet, philosopher and sculptor Walter Russell: “There is some subtle light in the eye of the inspired one…which tells you that you are in the presence of one who has bridged the gap which separates the mundane world from the world of spirit.”
That is what happened at Virginia Tech when Nikki Giovanni stood and spoke for 2 minutes and 52 seconds. All knew, we all knew, we were in the presence of an inspired one who was bringing us news from the world of spirit. That dear reader is the ‘that’.
Whether in poetry or speech or song or silence or a simple hug may we all be brought into the presence of an inspired one who comes to our hurting world from the promise of another and better place and makes us cheer.
Or maybe, just maybe, today we can be that one to another who is hurting.
Go Hokies!