RantWoman has a number of posts ripening in DRAFTS folders. RantWoman’s
head is also about to explode due to current events. Yet RantWoman is clear to
grab the kind of moment that wound up lasting all LAST Friday. RantWoman did not
witness the event personally and has no idea whether there were media moments.
This post is intended as the sort of prayer RantWoman learned from a
Quaker pastor RantWoman likes to ride with. RantWoman likes to ride with this
Friend both because she is tall and therefore owns cars with legroom and
because when she passes things like car accidents on the highways she just
knows to say a prayer. Here there is a tweet stream. There is need for prayer.
There is prayer.
RantWoman is reminded of a quote from somewhere “God does not call the
equipped. God equips the called.” Or maybe RantWoman is just old and somehow
the psychic trails of previous gravity grabs human body moments do in fact mean
“equipped.”
RantWoman generally would not expect to be grabbing from Twitter a
quote from the International Conference of Police Chaplains, and a quote that
long predates a recent Friday’s Twitter. The quote comes from someone who liked
a RantWoman tweet about chaplains and traffic and maybe lots of people who had
witnessed...
Christopher Mael (@my_1k) tweeted at 6:23 PM on Sun, May 19, 2019:
"Your job is not to judge. Your job is not to figure out if
someone deserves something. Your job is to lift the fallen, to restore the
broken,and to heal the hurting." - International Conference of Police
Chaplains manual
Spoiler alert: “lift up the fallen, restore the broken,” certainly
apply in the metaphorical sense but are not exactly applicable in the physical
sense and heal the hurting (survivors) is partly the work of God, partly up to
competent medical / mental health professionals.
Back to last Friday. No matter how much “Just pray” might be on point,
traffic tie-up notices generally do not come with “A chaplain is at the scene.”
And finally, even if there is a chaplain on the scene, if RantWoman
does not need to travel in the vicinity of the scene, she does not NEED to read
the tweet stream all day long.
But RantWoman is a grownup making grownup choices. RantWoman is also
maybe a tiny bit of an adrenalin junkie. Or else RantWoman would find it
difficult NOT to keep looking. In any case, RantWoman did keep reading. The
tweet stream eventually yielded several voices of people who had witnessed the
reason to have a chaplain on the scene. RantWoman did not repeat but referred
others up the tweet stream.
Someone else posted the number for the National Suicide Hotline.
The tweet stream also yielded a picture that is as dignified as
possible under the circumstances, but that RantWoman is STILL not going to
post. The tweet stream also mentioned another picture that RantWoman does not
even want to think about, the kind of picture that belongs in police evidence
files but that no relative or friend or neighbor or passerby reasonably wants
to look at unless they absolutely have to. That picture got taken down off
Instagram, an electronic venue RantWoman never visits in the first place.
By the end of the day, RantWoman’s mentions seem to have collected
people who knew each other and lived near the scene of the event. RantWoman’s
final tweet: Heartfelt condolences all around. Take care of yourselves. Do not
be afraid to reach out if you need, to the Crisis clinic or a faith community.
RantWoman’s tweets come against a background of gravity grabs the human
body moments.
In grad school RantWoman needed to request an extension on a political
science paper to attend a memorial. Speaking of this, RantWoman learned that in
addition to political and work connections to the deceased, the professor RantWoman
was speaking to also was going to the same memorial. Speaking of the shared
grief was itself healing.
Because this post is about falling human bodies, RantWoman also notes
this reflection on the anniversary of 9/11
There. Now back to the rest of RantWoman’s emotional torrents.
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