{"id":26410,"date":"2017-11-23T04:43:53","date_gmt":"2017-11-23T04:43:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=26410"},"modified":"2017-11-23T04:43:53","modified_gmt":"2017-11-23T04:43:53","slug":"a-communitys-suffering-continues","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=26410","title":{"rendered":"A community’s suffering continues"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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Life in a small town has its charms, as I’ve been told by those who grew up in rural America.<\/p>\n

The closest I have come to small-town life occurred for brief period in the early 1980s when our family moved from Portland to Gladstone, Ore. But Gladstone is a suburb of Portland, and is surrounded by the hustle and bustle of urban life.<\/p>\n

I mention this today because of the on-going grief that has gripped a rural community in the Texas Panhandle.<\/p>\n

Canadian is home to around 2,900 residents. One of those residents, though, has been missing for a year. His name is Thomas Brown. He is a Canadian High School student. He disappeared one year ago, on Thanksgiving, 2016.<\/p>\n

He hasn’t been seen or heard from since.<\/p>\n

I have been reluctant to comment on this story. I have not been following it closely, given that my attention has been diverted in many other directions.<\/p>\n

I will not venture an opinion on what I believe has happened to Thomas. But as I have tried to catch up a bit with this story, I am saddened beyond measure by the grief of those who love Thomas and who pin their waking hours to hoping he returns to them safely.<\/p>\n

What strikes me, too, is how events such as this affect small, rural communities. The nation’s heart shattered when the gunman opened fire at First Baptist Church in Sutherland Springs, a community of roughly 400 residents. Everyone in that town knew at least one of the 26 victims who were slaughtered by the madman. The community may never<\/em> recover from its shared grief.<\/p>\n

My sense as well is that Canadian also<\/em> may not recover from its sadness until it determines Thomas’s fate. Everyone’s hope, quite obviously, is that Thomas returns home and is able to explain his whereabouts.<\/p>\n

Until then, a Texas Panhandle community continues to struggle with its emotions. Prayers are most definitely in order.<\/p>\n\n

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Life in a small town has its charms, as I’ve been told by those who grew up in rural America. The closest I have come to small-town life occurred for brief period in the early 1980s when our family moved from Portland to Gladstone, Ore. But Gladstone is a suburb of Portland, and is surrounded … Continue reading A community’s suffering continues<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[7425,7426],"class_list":["post-26410","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-local-news","tag-rural-life","tag-sutherlan-springs-massacre"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26410","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=26410"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26410\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":26412,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26410\/revisions\/26412"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=26410"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=26410"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=26410"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}