REMEMBRANCE

REMEMBRANCE

I take a lot of heat for being a HOKIE, but none more so than in my very own hometown, which probably has something to do with its relative proximity to Charlottesville. I must say I love MY Virginia Tech for reasons that defy prestige on a page or points on a board; for me it´s personal. Virginia Tech, for me, is over 1,000 students coming together each week with hearts of worship; arms lifted high praising the one who gave it all at Campus Crusade for Christ. Virginia Tech is a group of my closest friends who always point to God and are always willing to serve, lead, sacrifice, and inspire. Young men and women who´s hope of changing the world is not a distant dream, but current reality. Virginia Tech for me are those who simply spend time loving on children as part of the Nicaraguan Orphan Fund, those who volunteer for Care for AIDS and those who go on Summer Project to evangelize and lead others in their Christian walk with the Lord. There are thousands and thousands more who personally reassure me each and everyday on campus that Michael and Marcus Vick are not our Legacy, but simply fuel for the fires of others who are set on burning.

For me, Virginia Tech is standing amidst mountain top removal cites with the Environmental Coalition, shuddering from the devastation and protesting the cradle to grave dependency on the archaically destructive energy source now choking our world ecosystem. For me, Virginia Tech is poetry that screams at injustice and thrashes against oppression. For me, Virginia Tech is cultivating peace in the Middle East, strategizing how to alleviate Failing States, combating extreme poverty in Latin America, and measuring ecological and human capital which is far more valuable than the figures of the world economist. For me, Viriginia Tech is holding downtrodden children in the streets of Ecuador and gasping at the wasteland American Petroleum Companies have left in the heart of the Ecuadorian Amazon. I know every university to have a similar story, but this is mine.

It´s April 16^th and though I may be many hundreds of miles away; my heart, my hope, and my tears are very much in Blacksburg. Today is a day of remembrance and healing. If I were at Tech we would not have class, so I would spend the day in the Chapel, surrounded by community, and most importantly deep in prayer. Today I would probably have had a coffee date with my favorite java buddy, my brother, Josh. We would have started the day in prayer, at some point both of us would have cried. We would talk about what it means to live for 32, but ache, pray, and lament for 33. After breakfast, we would probably take our Bibles to the Drill Field where we would discover and large group of friends. We would grieve, share stories of the friends we lost, reflect, be comforted by the Word, and praise God for goodness and mercy as the daffodils would be dancing in the Blacksburg breeze. Tonight there is a candle light service. Thousands will gather. Wax will melt down the trembling hands of masses of Hokies as they sing Amazing Grace; a VT Cadet will sound Taps through a quivering mute and a bell will chime thirty three times as the names are read aloud. It´s a somber and surreal scene.

Being a Hokie since 2007 has been shadowed by the tragedy in many difficult and beautiful ways. I distinctly remember at orientation, our leader´s worries about our perspective being the first class since 4-16-07. Postsecret is an art exhibit where people unveil secrets or confessions anonymously on post card sized images. Postsecret came to Virginia Tech after the tragedy as part of a traveling tour and healing exercise. I remember how emotional it was reading all the cards and i distinctly remember one that said, ¨I am very in love with my Virgina Tech, but I am still scared to go to class.¨ I remember calling my brother to ask about a Physical Chemistry exam he had jut finished the year the tragedy happened and students could elect to go back to take exams or not. He very emotionally said, ¨Rae, it was the worst exam of my life, but i just walked past Norris Hall (the building where the killings occurred) and somehow the problems and the grade doesn´t seem to matter anymore.¨

I come from a very patriotic family and I’m a patriot at heart and know a thing or two about Hokie pride. But nationalism can rear its nasty head. I shudder at the mutual animosity build up between Virginia and Virginia Tech and this small-scale nationalistic war we play. First, we pick sides, and then we deem ourselves more worthy and waste effort tearing others down, simply to build our own image up. I despise smack talk and believe it to have implications not fathomed. We put on our uniforms and mobilize and before long nationalistic pride is so consuming that the jerseys fade, the football disappears, and the collegiate ranking is overshadowed by the death toll. By witnessing this small town, big sound rivalry and observing through the lens of an anthropological ethnographic study, I see how Hitler could raise the Arian race against the Jews. I can barely see the line where we’re no longer are Cavaliers and Hokies, but Israelis and Palestinians, Sunnis and Shiites, Hutus and Tutsis, Serbs and Croats. I wave my red, white, and blue and I love my Virginia Tech, but I’m weary of conflict. Humility is truly the greatest weapon.

The dinner conversation with Papi Edi revolved around such grave and perplexing topics, which were, I guess circumstantially germane. We talked of war, of tragedy, of conflict, and of loss. I must say it was the most profound Spanish conversation that I have had to date. We spoke about how everyone cherishes Albert Einstein for his genius contributions, but he engineered death even before he had fully theorized relativity. Papi and I discussed how Einstein must have imagined Nagasaki and Hiroshima. He would have had to see the devastation or the potential thereof and yet he still created the atom bomb. Einstein is no hero. I talked about how absurd it is to walk the halls of the United States United Nations Headquarters in New York where there is a statue that once stood in Hiroshima, Japan. It’s beautiful, so mesmerizing that it draws you in; as you get closer you can see every intricately carved detail, when you round the corner to the other side, all you see the rippling impact of the blast. The other side is deformed slab of stone, seared and boiled, yet it becomes a work of art that stands beside Eleanor Roosevelt’s ethnic mosaic that reads “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” That’s the chilling irony; all the time we are constructing or memorializing reminders, yet history never learns or atones.

Papi told me about a really good high school friend of his who is now a General for the US Armed Forces. His friend had told him about the Vietnam Memorial in Washington D.C. Papi asked me, “Is it true? Is there really just a black wall of names that stretches for kilometros y kilometros?” The cold, concrete scribbled with lamentation and regret; dividing the two worlds, life and death, us against them, the dream versus the reality. Ecuador only knows of a territorial squabble with Peru, so Papi was asking me about what is like being a nation at war. I went to talk about US interference globally and as the words fell out I was taken aback. We’ve been at war for a nearly a decade; we’re still bleeding oil in the Middle East. To what is the point? I will never forget Papi´s statement, ¨The United States sends wawas to war.¨ That´s the word he used ´children´and unfortunately I couldn´t agree more.

We then talked of the media age and how the world calmly eats dinner in the CSI:NY morgue. We think that we have risen so far above the barbaric days where man was slaughtered for sport in the Great Coliseum in Rome. Yet, we boast a thriving multibillion dollar industry that reproduces horror for our enjoyment; the plasma flat screen just gives it a new dimension. As if Saw 4 wasn’t proof enough, are we not still entertained by watching the suffering of others?

With all of this swelling inside me, I talked about the tragedy of April 16^th with Papi. He wanted to know the details, how it was even possible. Armed guards at every entrance assure that Ecuador´s schools know no such violence, just it´s streets.

Here is the address Niki Giovanni gave on April 17, 2007, she´s an outstanding poet who I have had the privilege of workshopping with.

"We are Virginia Tech.

We are sad today, and we will be sad for quite a while. We are not moving on, we are embracing our mourning.

We are Virginia Tech.

We are strong enough to stand tall tearlessly, we are brave enough to bend to cry, and we are sad enough to know that we must laugh again.

We are Virginia Tech.

We do not understand this tragedy. We know we did nothing to deserve it, but neither does a child in Africa dying of AIDS, neither do the invisible children walking the night away to avoid being captured by the rogue army, neither does the baby elephant watching his community being devastated for ivory, neither does the Mexican child looking for fresh water, neither does the Appalachian infant killed in the middle of the night in his crib in the home his father built with his own hands being run over by a boulder because the land was destabilized. No one deserves a tragedy.

We are Virginia Tech.

The Hokie Nation embraces our own and reaches out with open heart and hands to those who offer their hearts and minds. We are strong, and brave, and innocent, and unafraid. We are better than we think and not quite what we want to be. We are alive to the imaginations and the possibilities. We will continue to invent the future through our blood and tears and through all our sadness.

We are the Hokies.

We will prevail.

We will prevail.

We will prevail.

We are Virginia Tech."

neVer forgeT... 4/16/07

As I said, I´m in Blacksburg today and everyday I´m a HOKIE.