As a child, Bailey was our summer respite, the open-air palace where poles and lures, hand-tied flies and whirring reels came out of storage and flashed in the sun. My family would load up the blue ’57 Chevy, then wind through canyons to a place where the native cutthroats were the grail.
It was one of the few places my father wasn’t preoccupied with work, where mother didn’t worry about what to feed us for our next meal. It was tender trout if we were lucky and marshmallows on the campfire if we weren’t. The splash of the South Platte River against the bridge pilings was matched only by the green rustling aspens and the willows’ warm caress. Thunderheads bloomed snow-white in a turquoise sky. It was sanctuary.
Bailey was a wide spot in the road, and the town school was a classic mountain structure, weathered wood eaves, a slight lean to windward no one seemed to notice, and sentinel teeter-totters. Back then schoolhouses acted as the community center – they almost always were unlocked and untended. Same with most of the cabins around; no one ever bothered other folks.
Some would say life was simpler then, others say it’s just romantic fables. Things changed, and Bailey grew up, a community of 17,000 on a four-lane highway. We grew up, too, with all the sophistication of a civilized, 21st century culture, now a society where quiet timeless places are for pictures, not for living. We don’t need the trappings of the simple life; moving in the fast lane 24/7. And, by the way, the notion of a safe, protected and respected sanctuary is somehow so naive, it’s quizzical to some.
That country schoolhouse is gone now, long fallen down and forgotten. But summer kids in autumn still come. And they still gather with books and smiles; they still trust. The old school is now new, all sparkly and modern, with security officers and easy exit hallways in case of disaster. The children still believe this is a sanctuary where they can thrive when all else spins out of control. There is a predictable rhythm of life in those calm halls. But we haven’t the collective will to safeguard them from our worst nightmares.
So it is across the country, in the Amish hamlet outside of Paradise, Pa., A different place, asleep in time, but with the same children’s hopes and dreams. The same sanctuary in one-room fashion, where trusting, hopeful and defenseless come, sent by cautious parents for a day of lessons and nurturing.
And the slow-motion scene plays out once more, a nauseating replay of Columbine terror. Madmen approach, well-rehearsed and armed, on a twisted path of revenge or blame or naked rage played out in the pornography of violence we so blithely tolerate on blue screens at home.
They choose their stage, and they place their blame: on parents long ago, or small hurts long forgotten, or some nameless evil that justifies their murder of innocents.
It hasn’t been a noticeable change. Rather, it was a gradual cultural abandonment; this loss of limits, a collective societal failure of will to say to each other, “Our covenant is to put children first.” After all, a society that fails to protect its children will eventually vanish in the mists of time.
Whatever prevails in the violent images on the Web and in cabled living rooms and in the blood-flushed media we view, we must not let the sickness of the worst in our world penetrate sanctuaries.
Sheriff Fred Wegener, who tried in desperation to free Emily Keyes from the fanatic in her Bailey classroom, said it best,” That wasn’t supposed to happen … us going into a school wasn’t supposed to happen … . A school is a sanctuary.”
Somewhere at the millennium turn, something got lost. Now we need to find it.
We must rediscover a culture where children are sacred gifts, sheltered by watchful communities, protected by families, not tokens of revenge, sex objects of twisted personalities or targets of some plan to punish. We need to again find places of hope, nurturing and presence, where civil discourse, ways of caring, acting and thinking deny hate and revenge. It can still happen after the funerals and the tears.
God bless little Emily; God forgive the slaughter of innocents; and God help those of us left behind to forge sanctuaries of good.
Paul Johnson, a consultant on organizational change and a 2005 Colorado Voices columnist, can be reached at compasserve@comcast.net.
