Working
from home a week ago, Wade mentioned he had received a CNN news flash on his
phone that there had been another mass shooting. Busy finishing up the duties
of my online course on sexuality and Christianity, I acknowledged this latest
shooting with an “uh-huh” and continued working.
Only
toward the end of the day did I learn the victims were children and the site an
elementary school. I lost it. Tears immediately came to my eyes. First graders,
six- and seven-year-olds, are particularly precious innocents to me. “Thy
childish essence was from God,” Charles Dickens wrote of another such child. I
lost it again when it was reported that wails could be heard coming from inside
the fire station when their parents learned their fate. And the educators—principal,
teachers, teacher’s aide—who lost their
lives, trying to protect “their kids”: OMG, OMG, OMG.
Moments
of silence are being observed the day I write this, one week later, in memory
of those so brutalized. Silence is good; it reminds us that there is nothing to
be said adequate to this occasion. It gives us a chance to catch our breath and
remember theirs. It gives a chance to reflect. But I’ve needed more than a
moment. I’ve needed a week, which is why this wasn’t last week’s post. And even
now it seems presumptuous, even dangerous to venture thoughts on the
incomprehensible tragedy. I felt sorry for all those pastors and rabbis and
imams who had to preach that weekend.
In
his public reflections, President Barack Obama said of us Americans, “We must
change.” Having both worked and volunteered in congregations, on campuses, and
in community organizations, I have learned that those are the three most
challenging and most resisted words. “We must change.”
Psychologist
M. Scott Peck defined evil as “the unquestioned self,” which he saw at work both
in institutions and individuals, an inability even to imagine one’s self or
one’s group being wrong. I have used it to describe the church’s resistance to
gay people. Whereas gay people, like all outsiders, usually grew up questioning
ourselves, the church resisted questioning its prejudice and exclusion.
“We
must change” is predicated on questioning ourselves and our institutions and
overcoming our inertia, something we are reluctant to do. For Christians, this
means also considering how Jesus would view us.
On
departure from the presidency, Dwight D. Eisenhower famously warned of the
“military-industrial complex,” which he had earlier warned would take food from
the hungry. But his original draft warned of the
“military-industrial-congressional complex.” He was persuaded to take
“congressional” out, but how needful the warning is today, as we witness
congressional impasse and collusion with weapons manufacturers, other major corporations,
and the National Rifle Association. (See the New York Times editorial explaining that the NRA actually
represents gun manufacturers, not gun owners. Btw, in my view, the NRA’s proposal of a guard in
every school is the solution of a third-grader [apologies to third-graders] that would only add to the body
count and further burden insufficiently-funded schools.)
When
the Virginia Tech mass shooting occurred years ago, I led a prayer for that
campus during a regularly scheduled prayer service of a church I was serving in
another part of the country. I was stunned to have another progressive
Christian offer what amounted to a “rebuttal” prayer, deriding our horror at
that violence when things like that happened all the time in Iraq and
Afghanistan. Of course we frequently prayed for Iraq and Afghanistan in that
service. But that night, I felt particularly close to those on the Virginia
Tech campus because I had spoken there, made friends there, one of whom I
called to see how everyone was coping and if any I knew were among the
casualties.
Similarly,
I felt close to those on the campus of Sandy Hook Elementary School because my
mother spent her entire professional life teaching first-graders, and I
remember every day after school seeing how those innocents hung affectionately on
my mother, even when they had moved to upper grades, because they loved her so
and she loved them so. I could see her also putting her body between the
shooter and those innocents.
At
the same time, I am mindful of the ten Afghanistan schoolgirls, all under 12
years of age, killed in the blast of a Soviet-era landmine as they collected
firewood for their homes on the Monday following the Newtown shootings.
“We
must change.” That means me, and you, this nation and the world.
This post reminds me vividly of an experience I had in 1999, on the occasion of the Columbine High School massacre. Our friend, retired MCC pastor Howard Williams, was visiting us from his home in Santo Domingo because he was in the US for eye surgery at the VA Hospital here. As I came home from my own teaching at Avondale HS, I rushed into the house to look for our cat Sugartoes, because I'd known she was ill. Howard kept trying to catch my attention and direct it to the TV news, but I simply ignored him, found the ailing cat under my mother's bed, and dashed with her to the veterinarians (she was diagnosed with incurable anemia, and went to the Rainbow Bridge two days later).
ReplyDeleteI have often thought about my emotions at that time. To me, the immediate tragedy of the loss of a beloved pet overshadowed the more distant horror of Columbine. My profound belief is that we begin to learn love and compassion by being completely vulnerable to those closest to us. I completely understand the truth that we cannot love the God whom we don't see if we don't love the neighbor whom we do see. The abstract concern for "all humankind" is focused by our personal concern for those closest to us. And I believe that the Holy Spirit knows when our love is sincere, even if limited, and cherishes and applies it wherever it is needed.