This past Sunday dawned bright and beautiful, a spring day as crisp and clear as the fresh snow in the mountains.
And when it happened, the tragedy that took her Sunday afternoon on a small-town street near the ocean, I thought of mountains. Both of us walking through the woods with bread in our hands. Feeding the animals after a hard rain.
Grade school teachers dream up these things. The whole nature walk through the woods with bread in our hands business. And I think of her mother the teacher who led us through the dripping forest after the storm, now lost in a forest of grief beyond endurance, the death of her teacher-daughter no accident, but an act of a man’s rage. A husband who once loved…
And it seems impossible that the spring days spin out so lovely still with the storm of death raining down. Walking through woods of “what if’s,” feeding animals of “if only’s,” and none of it making sense. This black forest of loss making no sense unless the battle is true…
How can this earth be alive with spring when someone so loved is wrenched from here? Her footprints pressed into countless hearts? The footprints of her children and children-students left to walk a dark wood without her now?
How can this be unless we can see that good and evil walk here, too?
Battlefield earth producing life and death and souls lost if they don’t see the blood that saves?
Her blood on the street and His blood on the cross and I pour them together today having never dreamed when we were girls in the woods this bread of grief now held in my hands after a hard rain.  

“May the peace of the Lord Christ go with you: wherever he may send you; may he guide you through the wilderness; protect you through the storm; may he bring you home rejoicing: at the wonders he has shown you; may he bring you home rejoicing: once again into our doors.” Day April 17th from the book of Common Prayer.