Yes, I was. This time it wasn’t “Film at 11.” I was scanning the news stories and happened on one that seemed to have broken within the hour. The video from that school was on the internet, more becoming available.

I watched as her dirty van entered the school parking lot. Later, I saw Audrey Hale’s picture, and she looked as your high school teen would. She parked and I watched her, dressed in camo pants and a red baseball cap jauntily worn backwards. Walking to the school’s locked doors, a semi-automatic machine gun in hand, she blasted the glass and entered the hall. She strolled about looking for people to kill.

Then I heard other voices from outside: “In in in,” “There, there,” “Go, go,” “Clear!” Each harsh, stern, focused--shotguns and rifles pointed. They moved fast, room by room, closets, bathrooms.

Suddenly we hear gun shots, heavy, solid, angry. Then cries, “Upstairs-up, up, up.”

Then it was quiet as these men slowly walked down the hall leading to the room where the shots came from--no sound. Suddenly 8 shots …bam …bam …bam…bam ….bam …bam …bam …bam. It was over.

This killing of children and teachers wasn’t any different from other shootings. For me it was, as this time I saw and heard all if it, almost as it happened--intimate, in color, with voice. Have I reached a level of familiarity of the killing of school children such that I just earnestly pause, pray for parents and survivors, then put it aside and go on my way?

What would Bill W and Dr. Bob say in these moments of deep tragedy. Well, the first thing they’d say is our Higher Power was there just as He was for all of us, for as sinners, we were always welcomed into the Program. Perhaps we weren’t aware of His presence but at this depth of our lives, we weren’t alone.

So it was that day in Nashville.

“Wait a minute,” I’m thinking, “even with her, can that be true? That’s hard to accept. We can empathize with the shooter, but she pulled the trigger, so she pays the price!”

God’s infinite power is beyond us, unfathomable, incomprehensible. Our minds can’t assimilate that. Can we limit that power? We know our Higher Power was with us through our final drink at the depths of our being. We didn’t earn His Grace and the question isn’t how serious our sins might have been. It is God’s love for us that we’re speaking of. We’re not required to earn that Grace or His love.

The Program gives us much--how to live life, acceptance, letting go, and more. Our ego intercepts this serenity and seeks to steer us away. We are always wrestling with our ego. He appears in many forms, and here our ego's plea was to ignore and disavow Christ’s presence with Audrey at the moments of the depths of her very being.

I must recall Christ’s Grace as the sinners we are and yes, I believe His Grace reaches Audrey Hale, and “yes,” in the words of the hymn, “He was there.”

May the peace of God, the serenity of the Program, be always with us.

Jim A, Traditions, Lebanon, Ohio