Yesterday the newspaper account of a crime of violence against a woman reminded me of something I wrote in my journal several years ago after I had read about the rape and murder of a homeless woman at the archery range in San Diego's Balboa Park.

HALLELUJAH

The beauty of the windows
and the clean good looks of us all
as we sat enjoying our sancity
helped us forget the newspaper.
His eye is on the sparrow,
the soloist sang with such feeling
that she and some of us wept,
and the choir sang
Hallelujah, Hallelujah!
And the pastor assured us,
God is great! God is good!

But what about the woman killed last night
in the lonely blackness of the night
behind bales of hay in the archery range,
a world not half a mile from where we sat.
Who watched from Heaven
when she was raped and beaten
and left to die in the dry whispering grass
while sparrows slept in the willow tree?

The police say she was habitually drunk
when she was not panhandling.
When she lay drunk in the street at noon
and when she soberly pulled her thin shirt around her
in the cool early hour of morning in the park,
who was watching this sad creature?
Was it the same God who watches sparrows?
Are they more lovely? Or are they cute?
When she was young and lovely,
was she graced with His attention
but somehow lost along the way
the right to be observed and included?
Have I missed the point, or what?