Friday column: She found meaning everywhere she looked

Published: January 14, 2011

The person who ended the life of 9-year-old Christina Taylor Green was said to be a nihilist — someone who contends that there's no meaning in life, no meaning in anything, anywhere. From what we know about her life, Christina Taylor Green found meaning everywhere.

She found meaning in sport, playing for her Little League baseball team and following in the footsteps of her grandfather, former major league pitcher Dallas Green.

She found meaning in school, where she not only learned, her teachers say, but helped others do so.

She found meaning in service, recently being elected to her school's student council.

She found meaning in family.

She found meaning in faith, having just received her first Holy Communion.

"She was interested in everything," her mother said.

A Washington Post story noted, "The girl was already aware of the "inequalities" of the world, Roxanna Green said. Christina often repeated the same phrase to her mother: 'We are so blessed. We have the best life.' "

A violent act put an end to Christina's life — along with the lives of five others — and damaged beyond measure the lives of many, including that of Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, the killer's main target. Yet, in Christina's faith tradition, it is the bedrock belief that such violence does not have the last word.

That belief was on display Thursday inside St. Elizabeth Ann Seton church, where her funeral was held.

Surprisingly — but thankfully — in this voyeuristic age, television cameras were not allowed inside. But still-photographers were.

Traditionally, in Roman Catholic funeral rites, clergy wear purple or black for mourning, understandable for any loss, let alone one as tragic as this one. In some parishes, though, those colors have given way to white — considered more appropriate for a service where the underlying theme is not burial, but resurrection; not death, but life.

White was the color of the day at

St. Elizabeth Ann Seton, the same color worn by many of the mourners who lined the way to the church.

White also is the funeral color worn in the tradition I'm more familiar with, that of the Episcopal Church, where mourning is acknowledged but the resurrection theme predominates -- in word as well as color.

Perhaps the most beautiful words of the funeral service are heard in the commendation, a place where the priest, quoting Genesis, reminds all in attendance that "Dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return."

Then the liturgy -- emboldened by faith in resurrection and thus defiant in the face of death -- continues: "All we go down to the dust; yet even at the grave we make our song: Alleluia, alleluia, alleluia."

For Christina Taylor Green, a 9-year-old who found meaning in so many places, though she goes down to the dust, we, too, make our song: "Alleluia, alleluia, alleluia."