Let’s all take a deep breath and relax

Talented people ooze through our communities
October 4, 2016
Early turnover in Cantrelle’s administration
October 4, 2016
Talented people ooze through our communities
October 4, 2016
Early turnover in Cantrelle’s administration
October 4, 2016

It is understandable when momentous events move us to sentiments we might later be ashamed of, when the inhumanity of man against man or woman reaches such a point that the revulsion becomes physical as well as emotional.


The suffering of people in Aleppo is one that comes to mind, although we as a people seem inured to the wholesale slaughter. Aleppo, for anyone who hasn’t been paying attention, is in Syria. Syria is in the Middle East.

No Syrian flags appear on anyone’s Facebook here. There is and has been plenty of uncharitable chatter about the people fleeing the carnage, or who fled when they could and now require placement elsewhere in the world.

In Aleppo, 338 people were killed by bombs last week, more than a hundred of them children


It is the type of savagery that can only be responded to with what I regard as the most powerful sentence in the New Testament, even if it is the shortest.

Jesus wept.

While children were being slaughtered in Syria, other things were going on in Terrebonne Parish.


Namely, clowns.

Local authorities have been running hither and yon to reports of clowns called in by well-meaning and concerned citizens. If the clowns are masked or their identities otherwise altered – as is the way with clowns – the perpetrators are certainly guilty of a low-grade felony. So far, to my knowledge, the only clown caught has been an 11-year-old boy who was counseled, along with his mother, by a deputy and allowed to go on his way. There was a report of a clown menacing a child with a gun, but attempts through Facebook to have the parents of said child witness call me were not successful. But the Terrebonne Parish Sheriff’s Office says that was the complaint made, and I would presume the child believed the object displayed to be a gun, whether or not this was the case.

My point here is that if we are frantically calling the police because we are seeing clowns, then our threshold for tolerance of social deviance is far lower than even I would have imagined. Far more disturbing to me than the presence of any clowns are the social media postings of otherwise reasonable adults, who have vowed to carry weapons to the bus stops where their kids gather to begin a day of schooling. Fortunately, nobody shot the 11-year-old who was seen in the clown outfit, really more the garb of a wraith than a clown. But if he had been shot, then we would arguably have something in common enough with Syria to have our prayers join those of its people, what with both communities having experienced children killed due to stupidity.


Our civic attentions were diverted, however, when we learned of a far greater crime that was committed in Chauvin. A 12-year-old child there had sent out an Instagram message indicating he was going to rape and kill people at Lacache Middle School. Understandably concerned parents notified school administration, and the school notified the Sheriff’s Office, and the child, after being interviewed by a deputy, was taken to the Juvenile Detention center, charged with terrorizing. That the press release from the Sheriff’s Office stated his “guardian” had initially come to fetch him should have been a clue to someone that we are likely dealing with a very disturbed child, likely more disturbed and distressed than dangerous to anyone.

But in an age when banking on the basest fears of people is seen as a qualification for the office of President of the United States, I shouldn’t be surprised. What did surprise me was a Facebook post by a woman from right here in Terrebonne Parish, who opined that the child should not have gone to juvenile detention, but to the jail, the one they put adults in. Once there, the post suggested, he could learn his lesson by being sexually assaulted.

I tried to communicate with this woman myself, anxious to learn what issues in her own past might make her an advocate of the very thing that started the controversy, a mention of child rape. But I got no response.


Jesus has no doubt been too busy crying because of Aleppo to pay attention to this person’s lack of charity and sick sense of justice. But if he knew of it, I am sure that would be reason for one more holy tear.

So I did his weeping for him.