To Walk with Saints and Scholars

3/15/26

“Where Does it Begin…or End?” Photo by LKV Walsh

The following paragraphs could be upsetting or challenging for some readers. They contain references to suicide. Please read gently.

This week, the world ended for at least one person in my village. And the world is at least more complicated for every one of his family members, friends, and employees. In a village about the size of my hometown in Texas (3000 if we count the entire catchment area and even the “blow-ins”), the loss of one person in a tragic fashion leaves a permanent and particular mark. This week, a young man in his forties – one who has a wife and two young children as well as dozens of employees between his five businesses – took his own life. His community is decimated.

I do not know this man personally. I know his wife, his friends from high school, the older adults who mentored him, his employees and more, but I did not know him. If I had, I would be among the many who spent today asking themselves, “What did I miss? What did I say last? What could I have done differently?” The answers will not come. And he will not return to us. And anyone with a heart has to wonder where the love and mercy of God is in that.

Well, exactly.

We read stories of healing – wanton women offered social repair and blind men made to see – and we ask…when us? When ours? But healing, it turns out, is not necessarily cure. God walks with us and not for us. That is so little for those who suffer so much, but it is not nothing. And I pray daily to see and to navigate the difference between what we want (cure) and what is available in a complicated and yet worthy world (healing).

Light a candle, please, for Siobhan and her children…and light a candle also for Ollie. May God bless, and amen.

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