Solace In The Midst Of Woe

Books By Patti Liszkay
​Available On Amazon

​"Equal and Opposite Reactions" http://amzn.to/2xvcgRa
and the sequel, "Hail Mary" https://www.amzn.com/1684334888
​Available on Amazon.

​SOLACE IN THE MIDST OF WOE

      Yesterday I was out doing some last-minute Thanksgiving shopping when I heard it on my car radio: Ahmaud Arbery's killers were found guilty. 
       I caught my breath then heaved a sigh of relief. This was news. "Oh, thank God, thank God," I said out loud. 
      Three men in a small Georgia town caught sight of a young man in a tee shirt and running shorts jogging down their street. They grabbed their shotguns and pistols, jumped into their pickup trucks then chased him down as if they were hunting an animal. They kept after him as he tried time and again to escape them. They finally trapped their exhausted prey and shot him multiple times, leaving him to bleed out on the ground. And they filmed their torment and murder of this human being in a gruesome snuff film,

...that, both ironically and fortunately, ultimately served to convict them.
      So why should there have been such great relief and why should it even have been all that newsworthy that these three cruel predators actually ended up being convicted by the jury that tried them? Why should there have been the least doubt of the outcome of their trial, the least fear that they would not be found guilty of murder?
        Because they're white men from a small Georgia town,

...and their victim was Black.

        And because the local police and prosecutor had no interest in charging these three white men with the murder of a black man until the crime reached national attention, which it might never have except for the work of moral, dedicated journalists and not a little luck.
​        So the guilty verdict brought relief to many of us. But not joy. Because the conviction of Ahmaud Arbery's murderers will not return him to his mother,

...or his father,

...or his friends and family.

     We don't even know if the conviction will change the minds and hearts of the people who scorn the concept that Black lives matter, who can't conceive that mothers and fathers of color cherish their children as much as white mothers and fathers do or that the loss of a child shatters any heart, no matter the color of the skin beneath which it beats.
     But the conviction of the murderers of Ahmaud Arbery, if it does not bring joy or change, does bring justice. And I hope on this Thanksgiving Day that justice will in turn bring to the ones who loved and still grieve over Ahmaud Arbery those things prayed for in the words of a Catholic prayer I still recall from my childhood:
        In our labor, rest most sweet;
        Grateful coolness in the heat;
        Solace in the midst of woe.
        Rest in peace, Ahmaud Arbery.