What if Good and Evil Had a Race?

The Boston Marathon is one of more than 500 marathons run in the world every year. Most of the participants are recreational runners. The marathoners train for sixteen to eighteen weeks . The first month they alternate short runs of three or four miles with carefully calculated days off. They add a weekly double-digit run the next month or two, adding a mile or so every week.

Marathoners eat healthfully; they hydrate as they run. Marathoners learn how to fuel up on protein bars and sports beans. They may have to nurse a pull or sprain along the way, but eventually they get back on their feet and make up for setbacks– all to be able to cross the finish line that ends a 26.2 mile run in four to seven hours. Recreational marathoners do not need to win. They just want to finish.

Boston Globe photo

It’s very disturbing to think that as today’s Boston marathoners were putting themselves through the stress and strain of training, someone else was putting the finishing touches on a scheme to take some of them and a portion of the city down.  The  unknown perpetrator must have obsessed over the power and the placement of two bombs destined to be detonated at the finish line at about the same time marathoners were getting caught up with the rhythm of their breathing, the swing of their arms, the pace of the run.

I wonder why one individual decides to direct one’s passion  toward the light – and the other to the darkness. Is it something one says or doesn’t say, over a period of time? An environment? A chromosome? A price? Once again, that shift in perspective made a tragic difference in innocent lives today

My own son and nephew, both of whom work in Boston, were too close to the danger for my comfort, that’s for sure. Their beloved Boston will not be quite the same ever again – especially on Patriot’s Day,the  traditional day of the marathon. But, like a runner's injury, this incident was a sprain of sorts.  Boston will rehab and will come out stronger, the way NYC has; the way Newtown will.

If Good and Evil had a race, Good would be the Tortoise and Evil would be the Hare

I pray tonight for the comfort of the families most impacted by today’s tragedy, the lives injured and lost, and for the first responders who, once again, choose to run toward the danger rather than away.,