I went to the beach the day after the Fourth of July.
My youngest, my husband and I parked in the Edgewater neighborhood and walked a couple of blocks to one of the street-end pocket beaches, nothing but a stretch of sand, a lifeguard walking the water’s edge and another in a rowboat, and a few dozen people — probably half of them children — wading and playing in the cold, clear water and basking in the hot sun.
It’s one of the perks of living in Chicago, this easy and free access to Lake Michigan, and the way the water can refresh your soul and calm your spirit. It manages to feel peaceful even with the cries of the gulls, the traffic on Sheridan Road and the delighted shouts of kids.
But a day earlier, water was anything but peaceful and life-giving, when flash flooding swept through the hill country of central Texas, killing at least several dozen people, including many children who were at a summer sleepaway camp, with several people still missing two days later.
There will be time to assign responsibility for the lack of warnings, or lack of awareness of warnings, and the lack of evacuations that could have saved many, if not all, of the victims. I can’t get past imagining the terror of the children, girls 8 and 9 years old, told to climb to the top bunks as the water filled their cabins; the horror of staff and counselors who risked, and in some cases lost, their lives trying to save their young charges; the devastation of parents and families who wanted to give their children an opportunity to get away, develop independence, make friends. I suspect many of them will be angry when people suggest that what happened to their children was God’s will; I know I would be.
Because we as a society, as a human family, have not built a world safe for children. We have not taken seriously the dangers that climate change brings, including more sudden and severe storms; we clearly have not made the killing of children in war unthinkable, as close to 15,000 children have been killed or taken hostage in the Holy Land since Oct, 7, 2023. Children have also been killed in Ukraine, and tens of thousands kidnapped from the country and sent to Russia. Here at home, children are at risk from guns and other violence, and in response, too often they have been isolated, told not to go outside because it’s not safe.
We should pray for them — for the families in Texas, for those affected by war and for those hurt by violence here — of course and always. But we must also find ways to act, to make the world a safer place for them to grow up, to learn how to be independent, to have their adventures, and as they do those things, for them to keep building a better world.