November 6, 2007 – Cloudy, cool. Happy birthday Emma. Saw a rare demonstration of the power of community and healing yesterday when virtually the entire town of Rupert, Vermont turned out at the McLellan Funeral Home in Salem, N.Y. for the funeral of Felicia Armstrong, killed last week in an apparent murder-suicide. She is the sister of my friend Anthony Armstrong, who, with his parents Doug and Michelle and his brother Charlie and his wife Rachel, stood on line for more than three hours as hundreds of people from this small community turned out to show their affection and support.
  I was, frankly, amazed at the power of this outpouring, and the literal cloud of support, concern and material aid that flowed to this stricken family at a dark time. It almost palpably lifted them all up. “We will go on,” Doug kept telling people who formed a line that stretched outside of the funeral home and down to the Salem Central School at times. Rupert taught me a lesson.
  Anthony was, as  his mother put it, “a rock,” reading from C.S. Lewis and the psalms, and greeting every single person in the line. After the funeral, the town gathered in Rupert for a community gathering and heaps of food. I haven’t lived in too  many communities that would turn out like that for one of its residents. I’m not sure I’ve ever lived in a place like that. I would like to though. People in town had brought toys and furniture, food and many contributions to the scholarship fund for Felicia’s five year old daughter Karlie. Contributions can be sent to the Karlie V. Armstrong-Gates Fund, c/o TD Banknorth, Main Street, Salem, N.Y., 12865.
  I wrote earlier this week about the problem of pain, which is, why do we experience so much in life when a supposedly omnipotent God could eliminate it. I don’t have the answer, but I mentioned earlier that everything is a gift, and that is what I saw at the McLellan Funeral Home yesterday. I saw a gift to Anthony, in that he was able to marshal his consderable talents to help his family through a black time, I saw the gift of community, and the gift of mercy and love. I saw the gift of family, which came together powerfully.
  These things are sadly rare in much of contemporary America, and when you see them laid out before you, you realize that tragedy can also walk hand in hand with joy and the unabashedly powerful power of love.  We live in a cynical time, me as much as anyone, but tragedy does sometimes bring out the best of us, open up our better impulses, lead us to beautiful places. Community does live, and it is real and almost awesome in its power, when unleashed and revealed.
  The problem of pain, I suppose, is really that it pain hurts, and that is strikes good people as wantonly as wicked ones. I remember from my police reporter days that violence doesn’t ever make sense to the people who experience it and I was reminded of that yesterday, as the Armstrong family gracefully spent hours in line thanking people for their concern while their daughter lay in an open casket right by them. Confronted with a tragedy, the town of Rupert rose up, and that, at least, was profoundly moving and seemed to me like a blessing.
  “God must be cruel to do this,” one of the townspeople whispered to me in line. Religion can be cruel, can bring pain.  I remembered St. Augustine warning that unwanted babies had to go to Hell. I had no answer for this man. C.S. Lewis wrote that “we are perplexed to see misfortunate falling upon decent, inoffensive, worthy people – on capable, hard-working mothers of families or diligent, thrifty tradespeople, on those whom have worked so hard, and so modestly, for their modest stack of happiness,” and have earned the right to enjoy it to the fullest.
  It is common to hear people ask after tragedy, “why did this happen to me? To us.” Nobody can tell them, really. The best I can do, in my own mind, is this: all of us will fall in the end, and while we live, we can only strive to be the best people we can be, and as the people of Rupert showed me yesterday, to care for one another as best we can. To lift one another up when we fall.