{"id":1738,"date":"2007-05-18T00:53:50","date_gmt":"2007-05-18T00:53:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/viamedia\/2007\/05\/echoes-rising.html"},"modified":"2007-05-18T00:53:50","modified_gmt":"2007-05-18T00:53:50","slug":"echoes-rising","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2007\/05\/echoes-rising.html","title":{"rendered":"Echoes, Rising"},"content":{"rendered":"

My sons usually call me when they are on their way somewhere – to the gym, to home from church, from work to home. This morning, Second Son called as he was walking from his apartment to work – work on the Virginia Tech campus.<\/p>\n

We chatted about this and that – how his novel is going, what movies he’d seen, his living plans once his lease runs out in a few weeks. And then he sighed.<\/p>\n

"Well, there’s Norris Hall," he said.<\/p>\n

I asked if it had police tape around it still.<\/p>\n

"Oh, they built a fence," he said. "And there’s a big debate about what to do with the building."<\/p>\n

So we talked about that. We talked about the students who had, contrary to the claims of various know-nothing pundits, fought back, students like ROTC cadet Matthew LaPorte who had been shot  trying to take Cho down.<\/a> He said one of the maintenance men, a regular at David’s place of business, had been shot at, but been missed. He spoke of one of his co-worker’s relations, a police officer early on the scene, who was still not sleeping because of what he saw. And he told me this:<\/p>\n

As the securing and examination of the crime scenes began in the afternoon and went on late into the night, one sound resounded through the heavy sad silence of the classrooms.<\/p>\n

Cell phones.<\/p>\n

Cell phones ringing, sounding, echoing against the walls. But cell phones that could not be  answered because it was still a crime scene and nothing could be moved quite yet, nothing could be touched. And on the other end of those rings, parents and friends, dialing again and again, fearful, hearts slowly breaking, dialing one more time. Into silence.<\/p>\n

Our news cycles move so fast now, so incredibly, terribly fast. All of that was just a month ago – April 16. One month. That’s all. It filled the news for a few days, but now the news has moved on to something else, back to other things. <\/p>\n

But hundreds have not.<\/p>\n

You know, when I was younger – actually not much younger – the life of a contemplative was unimaginable to me. How, I wondered, could anyone pray all day? What could keep you down on your knees so much? How could you think of enough to pray for?<\/p>\n

Slowly, I’m beginning to figure it out. And now I think there are not enough hours in the day or night. Not nearly enough.  Trusting that the prayers rise out of the grief, making their way, not into the air where they cannot be answered, but into the waiting embrace of Life and Love Eternal. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

My sons usually call me when they are on their way somewhere – to the gym, to home from church, from work to home. This morning, Second Son called as he was walking from his apartment to work – work on the Virginia Tech campus. We chatted about this and that – how his novel…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":180,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1738","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"yoast_head":"\nEchoes, Rising - Via Media<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2007\/05\/echoes-rising.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Echoes, Rising - Via Media\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"My sons usually call me when they are on their way somewhere – to the gym, to home from church, from work to home. This morning, Second Son called as he was walking from his apartment to work – work on the Virginia Tech campus. We chatted about this and that – how his novel…\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2007\/05\/echoes-rising.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Via Media\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2007-05-18T00:53:50+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"awelborn\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Echoes, Rising - Via Media","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2007\/05\/echoes-rising.html","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"Echoes, Rising - Via Media","og_description":"My sons usually call me when they are on their way somewhere – to the gym, to home from church, from work to home. This morning, Second Son called as he was walking from his apartment to work – work on the Virginia Tech campus. We chatted about this and that – how his novel…","og_url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2007\/05\/echoes-rising.html","og_site_name":"Via Media","article_published_time":"2007-05-18T00:53:50+00:00","author":"awelborn","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2007\/05\/echoes-rising.html","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2007\/05\/echoes-rising.html","name":"Echoes, Rising - Via Media","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/#website"},"datePublished":"2007-05-18T00:53:50+00:00","dateModified":"2007-05-18T00:53:50+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/#\/schema\/person\/aea2dcda1635c9c2d6030d9c7595725a"},"breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2007\/05\/echoes-rising.html#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2007\/05\/echoes-rising.html"]}]},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2007\/05\/echoes-rising.html#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"Echoes, Rising"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/","name":"Via Media","description":"Amy Welborn","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/#\/schema\/person\/aea2dcda1635c9c2d6030d9c7595725a","name":"awelborn","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/9f2\/9f2100183464289fedc5b8a621c15110x96.jpg","contentUrl":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/9f2\/9f2100183464289fedc5b8a621c15110x96.jpg","caption":"awelborn"},"description":"Amy Welborn was born in 1960, the only child of a now-retired professor of political science, a teacher-librarian-artist mother,deceased since 2001, was a teacher, librarian and artist. The Catholicism comes from her side. Amy grew up in a number of places - Indiana - Washington, DC - Lubbock Texas - Arlington, Virginia - DeKalb, Illinois - Lawrence, Kansas - and Knoxville, Tennessee, where the family settled in 1973. She attended Knoxville Catholic High School, then the University of Tennessee where she majored in history. She received an MA in Church History from Vanderbilt University, where she wrote a thesis on the changing role of women in 19th century American Protestantism, and the ways Scripture was used to justify those changes. She worked as as a teacher in Catholic high schools and a Parish Director of Religious Education and started writing for the diocesan press - the Florida Catholic - in 1988. Amy has written columns for Our Sunday Visitor and Catholic News Service at times over the past twenty years. Her articles have been published in venues ranging from Our Sunday Visitor to the New York Times to Commonweal. She has written 17 books. 18, if you included the as yet tragically unpublished novel. Amy has five children, ranging in age from 26 to 4 and was married to Michael Dubruiel, who died unexpectedly in February 2009. She lives in Birmingham, Alabama.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/author\/awelborn"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1738","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/180"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1738"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1738\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1738"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1738"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1738"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}