gun violence – Southwest Conference Blog

Slaughters of the Innocents

by Rev. John Indermark

The second chapter of Matthew contains a story routinely left out of the Christmas narrative. Shortly after Magi arrive, and then leave, a mass murderer enters the scene. Intent on clinging to office, King Herod ordered the slaughter of innocent children.

I have heard reasons for this story’s banishment from the season’ readings. No other record exists of this massacre, so scholars say we cannot establish its factual truth. In services with sanctuaries still decked for Christmas, we also don’t want Herod raining on our parade. And so, typically, we leave it for another day, a day that tends never to come. Of course, our thoughts and prayers are with the families of those children…

I wrote very similar words to these in December of 2012, when the Innocents of Sandy Hook went slaughtered. To be sure, other mass shootings had occurred in prior years: Virginia Tech, Columbine. But in Sandy Hook, these were children. First-graders. Innocents. Murdered by – oh, I don’t know. A deranged young man. A culture infatuated with guns. An industry that had the gall to announce shortly afterward that the only way to stop a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun. You know, increase sales.

I had truly – and naively – hoped that the Slaughter of Innocents in Sandy Hook might be the turning point. Again, these were children assaulted with an assault weapon. But the key word there is naively. I may not know if Herod’s story is factual, but by God it is true. Clinging to power, abetted here by the political ammo of campaign contributions, brought to a screeching halt any hope of change after Sandy Hook. As it has ever since.

And after slaughters in El Paso and Parkland and Buffalo and elsewhere, innocent people going about their daily lives gunned down because, by gum, we have a right to any weapon of our choice: now we are back to the Slaughter of Innocent Children. In Uvalde. In a state where the governor campaigned not to be number 2 in the country for gun ownership but number 1. Congratulations – I guess you got your wish. Of course, as your lieutenant predictably tweeted, our thoughts and prayers are requested.

Unless and until pious words for gun victims become righteous actions to prevent gun violence, the Slaughter of Innocents will continue unabated. How did Hosea 8:7 put it?

They who sow the wind will reap the whirlwind.

The Use of Violence

by Hailey Lyons

I am not the only one who watched the storming of the Capitol in utter horror. And I am certainly not the only one who watched it without surprise. We knew this was coming, we knew for decades that this was going to happen.

What was unexpected to the neoliberals was what I and other marginalized peoples have been warning about for decades. As we departed from Evangelicalism and conservative ideologies, as we grew up in open opposition to the powers that oppress us, and as we ran to mainline and progressive havens, we warned about the dangers to come. But we were not heard. Instead, we could neither truly escape the past nor shrug off the painful present, leaving us in rage and silence.

The terrorists that stormed the Capitol did so with signs like ‘Jesus Saves’ and American flags, Confederate flags, and ‘Proud American Christian’ flags. Their jubilance was palpable as they attacked the press and stood on the Capitol for steps an hours-long photo-op. They invaded offices of members of Congress, planted bombs, and posed in the chambers themselves. Their purpose was clear: to defy the will of the people and vaunt the power of white supremacy and Christian nationalism.

And yet, all I see from the media and from ecumenical responses are denouncements of violence. The media and our political institutions use symbolic language to talk about America’s status as a place of peace and hope. Church leaders talk about Jesus’ nonviolence as if it were enshrouded in sacred history and understood as truth by all. They shame their institutions and denominations.

To say that Jesus was nonviolent is to ignore the Scriptures. The man who spoke out in synagogues and on mountainsides in the face of Roman colonial and Pharisaical rule did so with the knowledge that his teachings and practices were a violent rejection of them. The man who braided a whip and struck people and livestock, overturning tables in the temple of the Lord was not nonviolent. The man who preached that we were to turn our cheek once slapped to allow only a dishonorable strike be the next one was not nonviolent. The man who announced that his was the way of truth and life; the man whose death spawned an entire religion that would for centuries violently oppose powers and principalities was not nonviolent. Even in its appropriation as state religion, Christianity has ever been a religion of violence. To say otherwise cherry picks church history in the same manner we malign Evangelicals for.

America is not a place of peace and nonviolence. Our arms and munitions fund wars all around the world and have done so for an exceedingly long time. Our laws and governments privilege violence against the marginalized to keep us marginalized. Our culture is rooted in violent destruction of those who oppose us. We are not a shining beacon of democracy; we are an imperial power inherited from colonial Europe.

No broad civil rights movement has ever been achieved in America without violence. From the Civil War to recognize black bodies as human; to women’s suffrage and the street carnage; to the Civil Rights Movement of the 60s that saw still more black and brown bodies murdered and brutalized; to the Stonewall Riots that demanded LGBT bodies be seen and not murdered or brutalized; to the Black Lives Matter and ANTIFA marches in recent years. Martin Luther King Jr. knowingly incited violence during his marches, and toward the end of his life he was on the crux of announcing far bolder and violent measures to take racial equality by force. As police moved in to arrest and brutalize and murder LGBT people at Stonewall, they stood up and fought back directly. Had they not, I wouldn’t have the right to be where I am today.

In my coming out and coming to understand my peoples’ history and culture, I am horrified at the violent methods by which transgender bodies have been systematically oppressed, brutalized, and murdered. I live with the terror of knowing that not passing in public subjects me to the possibility of verbal abuse, a beating, or being killed. Simply by choosing to be myself I am an act of violence, of violent rejection of the multifold violence done to me.

Religious and political institutions ignore the fact that violence is not and has never been solely an expression of physical force. Violence takes many forms, and most often it is epistemic and psychological. While we distract from the real issue at hand and titillate on the use of violence, we must understand that the epistemic and psychological forms of violence are the most common tools of those in power. For us on the margins, it is not just physical violence that we face when we march in the streets, but the epistemic and psychological violence by institutions seeking to rip legitimacy away from us. Marching in and of itself is an act of violence, violently rejecting the oppressive powers that would see us isolated and alone in order to be more quietly brutalized and murdered.

When we read Scripture, we find Christ is most often present where power and violence clash with the marginalized. Christ is a force of violence, but where the state privileges power, Christ privileges people. Two ideologies – power and people – clashing against each other necessitate violence, or otherwise there would be no opposition. When American neoliberal culture and Evangelicalism perpetuate the idea that violence is evil, they take away the opportunity for opposition to them, and instead rule unchecked. This is nothing less than hypocrisy and perpetuates still more violence and oppression. Neoliberals and Evangelicals alike are horrified by it and yet don’t hesitate to use it when it benefits them. We should condemn why the terrorists were at the Capitol rather than critiquing the methodology when we were just cheering Black Lives Matter on and acknowledging the only language that gets the attention of those in power is violence. It is nothing short of hypocrisy and grandstanding.

It’s not just our burden, but our requirement as Christians to check this oppressive power with the people. Whether marching in the streets, teaching a different curriculum, or favoring the marginalized over those in power, these are all acts of violence. They are also immense acts of love and compassion and empathy, binding us together in solidarity against power and violence. If we do not acknowledge those facts and cower in the shadows when the word violence is used like a slur, then we will never achieve equality and we will never be truly heard on the margins.

Let us remember where the true war is being fought. Let us adjust course and fight the fight as Jesus and the Prophets did, knowing that things can be better. Knowing that one day our children and grandchildren will know a world in which violence is no longer necessary because there is nothing but the people. Until then, we fight.

Thoughts and Prayers

by Tony Minear

“The hands, that help, are holier than the lips that pray.” – Robert Ingersoll

“You’re in my thoughts and prayers.”

These words are frequently my go to in a variety of settings: End of a hospital visit, “Thoughts and prayers;” As I say goodbye to someone I’ve visited with, “Thoughts and prayers;” After hearing of a recent tragedy, “Thoughts and prayers.” These words express my care and concern for the individual and their situation. I admit, they are not always descriptive of my future behavior. I, like you, forget.

The shooting in Parkland, Florida, like similar moments the past three months, brought these words to the lips of politicians, churches, and individuals. From the lips of others, came the words, “Thoughts and prayers aren’t enough. They never have been.”

Emily Reid has read the headline, “Among the deadliest shootings in history …” thirteen times already in her twenty years of life. She is not optimistic this will be the last time. Unless? Unless we do something. Unless we act. Otherwise, thoughts and prayers will never be enough.

This reality is expressed in the holiest of Jewish days, Yom Kippur. On the Day of Atonement, the sins which Israel committed before or against God were cleansed. The people stood before God clean. There was one exception. A wrong against a fellow human being remained if you had not sought out their forgiveness. That one would not be cleansed.

Neal Urwitz states, “At least in the Jewish Tradition, if you have not made things right with your fellow man, G-d will not answer your prayers. And if you have made the same prayers over and over and over again, and the same horrors keep happening, that’s not on G-d. That’s on you.”

Mass shootings are on us despite our prayers if we have not acted to make things right with past and future victims. We make things right by confessing our wrong of idleness and start to act in ways that will change our relationship to guns. Prayer can no longer be our pacifier.

What can we do? Below are some steps we can take now.

Reconsider our stance on guns by becoming aware of the various opinions surrounding this subject. What solutions are being proposed? Are they taking it to far or not far enough? Listen and read widely.
Host a small group of friends and family to look at gun control from a religious and spiritual perspective. A great resource is “Faith vs. Fear.”
Participate in a March for Our Lives this March 24.
Contact your senators and express your view on guns and ask them to find a solution that makes a real difference.

Let us offer only thoughts and prayers if we are willing to act.

A teacher’s perspective on the lunacy of arming teachers

guest post by Samantha Fox

I am a third-grade teacher at a moderately poor school. I deal with troubled children on a regular basis but as Rebecca Berlin Field of Douglas S. Freeman High School in Virginia wrote, “Nowhere in my contract does it state that if the need arises, I have to shield students from gunfire with my own body. If it did, I wouldn’t have signed it. I love my job. I love my students. I am also a mother with two amazing daughters. I am a wife of a wonderful man. I have a dog that I adore. I don’t want to die defending other people’s children; I want to teach kindness and responsibility … and art history.”

I also am a mother of two wonderful children and a wife to an amazing husband and have a dog I adore. I want to teach love and understanding, to discourage bullying, and create opportunities for children that their parents may not have had. I challenge anyone to call me a coward when I teach 25 active and sometimes angry 3rd graders 5 days a week, but I am not trained to fire a weapon nor could I ever fire one even if trained.

It is madness to even to suggest that teachers be armed. New York City police statistics show that simply hitting a target, let alone hitting it in a specific spot, is a difficult challenge. In 2006, in cases where police officers intentionally fired a gun at a person, they discharged 364 bullets and hit their target 103 times, for a hit rate of 28.3 percent. In 2005 a 17.4% hit rate. New York City officers achieved a 34 percent accuracy rate in 2007 (and a 43 percent accuracy rate when the target ranged from zero to six feet away). Yet our President wants to arm teachers after a simple training course. There is greater likelihood that an innocent student will be shot than an arm gunman. MADNESS at an extreme.

Guns have no place in schools. Cameras, stronger security maybe but the real answer is to eliminate bullying, to teach our children to respect all students. And the place to start this lesson given President Trumps tweets and comments is from the top down.

I want teachers and parents to speak out against this lunacy.

American Idol

Guest post by Jay Deskins, a Disciples of Christ pastor recently relocated to Tucson; a current Bethany Fellow.

It all started when a tyrant king ruled over the colonies of the East coast of North America. The early European Americans were unable to arm themselves in the protection of their land, liberty, and safety. The climax of this control was the Boston Massacre, March 5, 1770. A group of unarmed protestors were shouting down the British soldiers, who were sent to police the colonies, and began to throw stones and snowballs at the soldiers when the soldiers pointed their muskets towards the crowd and killed five of the crowd. Between that event and countless other stories of the oppressive government forcing itself on the homes, lives, and liberty of the civilians, it is no wonder that our country’s founders added the second amendment to the constitution.

However, now in the 21st century, we have similar situations. Unarmed people being shot and killed by a policing force, unwelcome seizures of property, and the rise of tyrants. And yet, what remains? The call to arms.

As a Christian minister, I can’t help myself in seeing that the American gospel of the second amendment is antithetical to the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Guns have become the golden calf of American society; an idol worshipped, even above the words and promises of our ancient scriptures.

Idols are those objects that we create that become our focus. An idol is that which gives us hope. The golden calf of ancient Israel was created when Moses went up to Mount Sinai for forty days, and when the people feared the worst for him, they created a new god that they believed had liberated from slavery in Egypt. Out of fear, lack of focus, and lack of vision they created the calf.

An idol goes places where we think God will not. There are shouts for our schools to be armed because God is not allowed in schools. When our understanding of God is that of a divine presence that is far off and away, a conclusion can be drawn that we have to invite God to our world. But the fallacy here is that if our God is in all places at all times, then our God is absolutely present in school. Since when do we have the right to deny the presence of God?

In 2018, it is more clear than ever that we have built a new golden calf, and in it we have hope, we have promise. One that liberated us from the throws of the tyrant king, one that gives us great hope that will liberate us once again. One that gives us ultimate protection in the face of evil. One that, when the God of our faith seems absent, and that has been cast out of our public sphere, is always present. One that promises equality for all. But, this, this is not good news for us.

You see, the good news is this: the God of Christian worship is not one that calls for self-protection, rather calls us to give our lives. The God of Christian worship is not one that calls for the armament of God’s people, rather calls us to turn our weapons into tools for work. The God of Christian worship is not one that says an eye for an eye, but rather turn our cheek.

God calls us to build relationship, and we can’t do that when we place an idol between our neighbors, or between us and God.

It is time. Let us as people of faith reject this idol. This isn’t political. This is faith. Where is your faith?

Let us throw our idol in the fire, melt it down, put it in the river, and drink it. All of them.

The Second Amendment Can’t Heal Trauma

by Bill Lyons

How did this gun-owner-since-he-was-eight find himself at a prayer vigil to end gun violence on the steps of the Michigan state capitol in 2013? The easy answer is that Michigan Prophetic Voices, a nonpartisan, statewide organizing clergy group invited me to be there. But I had another reason.

In my family owning a gun was explained as a rite of passage, not as a Second Amendment right. When my father handed me my first gun he said, “You are old enough now to learn how to use this safely. There is one thing you have to promise me: never point it at anyone. If you do, I will take it away for good.” I made the promise.

The man who said those words had heard different words from his father. “Never steal another man’s property,” my grandfather had told my dad, “and if it’s yours, you fight like hell to keep it.”

Those words shaped events of an early August morning in the 1970s when my father and grandfather leveled shotguns at would-be burglars in the family business and, out of fear for their own lives, fired. One of those 20-something burglars was killed.

As I stood on the capitol steps holding a card with the name of a Detroit 17-year-old killed by gun violence in 2012, I remembered lying on my living room floor as a 6-year-old and hearing the gunshots that killed the would-be burglar. The name on the card read Exil Johnson. I wondered what the name of the would-be burglar had been because I felt a need to pray for him and his family too.

Like families do, my little sister and I were shielded from every detail of that summer night. I had no idea that the man who handed me my rite-of-passage weapon had not kept the promise he was asking me to make. But on that cold January morning in Lansing I knew why he had demanded it of me. When I baptized my dad in the late 1980s, all he said when he responded to the altar call was, “I just hope God can forgive me.” He was still carrying — and carried until the day he died — the wounds of pulling that trigger.

My dad and I lived on different sides of the theological and political spectrum. But he and I agreed on stricter gun laws like banning civilian ownership of military-style weapons. Watching my dad’s pain because he didn’t keep the promise he had demanded of me took all the pleasure out of my being a gun owner. The Second Amendment contains no healing in its words.

My dad carries other wounds too. After the events of that summer night were over, my grandfather walked up to my dad and put his arms around him. “I’m really proud of you, son,” he said. It’s the only time my father can remember hearing those words or feeling his father’s embrace. On the capitol steps I prayed for my father’s healing, and thanked God that I hadn’t had to pull a trigger in order to hear those words or get a hug from my dad.

Moral suasion and political action must join forces if gun violence is going to stop. The Church is responsible for the moral suasion part of that strategy. Ending violence means teaching fathers and mothers to always choose their words with an eye to their children’s futures, and to find reasons to be proud of their children that are not related to violence or competition, as much as it means gun control laws. Ending the violence means taking gun violence video games out of our kids hands as much as it means taking assault weapons out of grown up hands. Ending the violence means having tough conversations in our churches and in our families about how our faith and our patriotism intersect, about our values and priorities, and about what sacrifices we are willing to make for the health and welfare of others. Ending the violence means taking a stand without worrying about losing friends or losing contributors. If only gun control was as simple as my father had made it for me.

This article originally appeared on Sojourners on 2/7/2013.

A Different Response

by Abigail Conley

I sat with my dad in his pickup truck as the traffic lights turned red, green, and yellow, with no one moving. The radio announcer reminded us, “We’re observing a moment of silence for Deanna McDavid and Marvin Hicks.” Well, it was something like that. I was eight or nine years old. I don’t remember the details—not really—but I remember sitting there at that light, waiting. Something had changed.

The day a high school student shot and killed his English teacher and school custodian was not long past. The high school was the closest one to my home, though in a different county. In that part of the world, that meant a different school district. I vaguely remember us being held in classes a little longer that day, school officials not yet ready to run the buses, not yet sure what was happening. The school was at most twenty minutes away, far closer than the high school in the same district.

This was long before the days of visitor logs, school metal detectors, or even locked doors. The back door to the boiler room at my school was most always propped open in the winter, cooling the janitor who also shoveled coal into the furnace. On nice days, the doors at the end of the hallway would be propped open, too, letting a breeze blow through the building. It seems visitor logs, school metal detectors, and locked doors haven’t solved the problem.

The school shooting I remember was twenty-five years ago, in January of 1993, also in Kentucky. It shocked the community, of course. If I were older, I’d probably remember what the school did in response. As is, I just remember that day in my dad’s pickup truck. I do remember other tactics schools used to keep us safe. We had fire drills and earthquake drills and tornado drills. Window shades were drawn to protect us from seeing the helicopter landing on the school playground, carrying the father of one of the students to a hospital where he would die. We stayed crouched in the hallways for the better part of an afternoon as tornadoes threatened.

None of that created the fear I’ve seen in kids now, especially those in 6th or 7th grade. They’re old enough to know what’s going on, but not old enough to make any sense of it. The truth is, I don’t know if they’ll ever be able to make sense of it. These aren’t the kind of things I want them to make sense out of.

Pastors are used to reminding people that the phrase that appears most often in the Bible is, “Do not be afraid.” We usually see that as prescriptive for how we approach a world that can be terrifying. Storms rage, but God remains—that’s at least one of the stories we tell.

Our modern world is different, though. We have control over so many of the things that we liken to the storms. It’s even absurd to say, “Do not be afraid,” to someone who has a gun pointed at them. How instead do we say wholeheartedly to each other, “Do not be afraid,” because we have created a reign that doesn’t merit fear?

“Jesus said, ‘Do not be afraid.’” isn’t the right response to hunger, or homelessness, or broke people, or gun violence. We have the power to calm those storms, to remove the threat that causes fear. I wonder how we are learning to cry out, as Jesus did, “Peace, be still.”

If we learn that, maybe towns won’t stand still for moments of silence.

Guns and God: A Progressive Christian View

by Tony Minear

I own a hand gun. It is a 22 Ruger revolver single action with a 6-inch barrel. I received it from my dad on my 18th birthday. I even bought a genuine leather western-style holster in Tijuana to go with it. The next two summers I played cowboy while working at a church summer camp. I haven’t shot that gun for over twenty years. I go back and forth between selling it or some day giving it to one of my grandchildren. However, the possibility of one of my grandchildren or any individual doing harm to themselves or someone else, intentional or unintentional, frightens me. Occasionally, I contemplate literally carrying out the Hebrew scripture, “Hammer your swords into plowshares and your spears into pruning hooks.” I could have my pistol melted down to a pile of metal. Maybe even molded into a miniature plow. Not sure how the grandchild would like receiving a plow as an heirloom.

With the recent church shooting in Vegas and now Texas, the topic of gun control is once more front and center in our conversations. What can Progressive Christianity bring to the table in this arena? I offer an entrée, food for thought, for your culinary pleasure. What one believes about God can inform one’s stance on gun control.

Would Jesus under any circumstance condone a human being taking the life of another? No. Would one human being inflicting violence upon another ever be present in the realm of God’s will, which Jesus envisioned, either now or in a future “heaven?” No.

My understanding of Jesus’ view of the Kingdom of God, or God’s will for humanity, is centered around God’s love and value of life. Yet some stories in the Bible seem to contradict this. God is said to have ordered the genocide of groups of non-Hebrews. Justification? They are evil. Yet God admits to using a wicked people (The Hebrews), who are slightly less evil, as executioners. This doesn’t compute. Perhaps our willingness, and at times, desire, to use violence influences how we interpret God’s will and imagine God. For me this does compute. If God is inclined to acts of violence, no wonder we are too.

Wasn’t it God who established and decreed that the results of sin are death? Wasn’t it God who desired daily sacrifices for enjoyment and appeasement? Isn’t it God who continues to use the threat of death as a means to shape our beliefs and control our behavior? If God constructed a system of justice based upon death and violence, is it any wonder that some Christians and nations are comfortable turning to violence to resolve their problems or punish evildoers? Is it any wonder that some Christians carry a gun and are willing to use it to protect themselves or their family? Is it any wonder that efforts to legislate laws to limit certain guns in our communities, to decrease the chances of such weapons ending up in the hands of unstable individuals, or to take steps promoting gun safety in homes, are opposed by some Christians?

What if this picture and understanding of God as violent and using violence is incorrect? What if what the historical Jesus taught about God and God’s kingdom being encapsulated in one word, “love,” is right? I choose to believe it is. For this reason, I read all of scripture through the filter of love. It is my bias. It is the presupposition I bring to my study of the Bible. It is the reason why I choose not to have ammunition for my gun in the house. It is the reason I continue to ponder the validity of a pacifist life for myself and what that might look like. It is the reason why I’m googling metal artists who can take a gun and turn it into a plow.

Faith Nonetheless

by Kenneth McIntosh

It would seem that in recent news there’s something happening to make almost everyone afraid. Gun violence in general, the Pulse nightclub massacre, and killings connected with racism, are all viscerally upsetting. Political stakes have never seemed higher, with voters on the left and the right portraying the upcoming presidential race as near-apocalyptic in its possible outcome. Even before these recent events, Time Magazine, at the start of this year, published an article titled “Why Americans are More Afraid Than They Used to Be.” It included terrorism as a cause, along with “the politics of fear” (the trend for politicians to invoke fear as motivation for their causes). They add that the widespread loss of trust in government (on all sides) leads to the perception that citizens must handle threats increasingly by themselves — adding to the sense of anxiety.

Christians in mainline denominations have a well-established and laudable reaction to fear; we redouble efforts for justice. This certainly reflects Jesus’ priority to “seek first the Reign of God, and God’s justice.” There’s a risk, however, in passionate involvement even for thoroughly good causes—activists can fall prey to the same fears and anxieties that afflict persons who are not involved in justice work—and when that happens, people of faith lose their distinctive witness.

In uncertain times, belief in the Living God can counterbalance the temptation to fear and its attendant maladies (such as anger, desperation, withdrawal and poor judgement). Marcus Borg, in his book The Heart of Christianity, wrote about how his wife would teach adult classes the meaning of faith by asking them “How many of you have taught a child to swim?” Borg then notes that “Faith … is trusting in the buoyancy of God. Faith is trusting in the sea of being in which we live and move and have our being.” He goes on to explain “The opposite of trust is not doubt or disbelief…its opposite is ‘anxiety’ or ‘worry.” He concludes “Growth in faith as trust casts out anxiety.”

More recently, John Cobb, the famous process theologian, released his book Jesus’ Abba: The God Who Has Not Failed. Cobb laments that misunderstandings of God’s nature have led many liberal Christians to eschew robust faith in the Deity that Jesus followed. The unfortunate result is that such a religion “rarely challenges its members to devote themselves to God.” Cobb understands the problems that have led believers to eschew God-talk. The list of these problems includes: claims of God’s absolute omnipotence, lack of compassion, scientific unreasonableness, and exclusivity. But these problems—he says—are not attributes of Jesus’s Abba God. We need to relate to God with the same manner of faith we see in Jesus, because The pressing issues of our world require actions that will be “hard to achieve without the belief in the One who is, or relates to, the whole and is felt worthy of our total devotion.”

In Luke 18:1, “Jesus told them a parable about their need to pray always and not to lose heart” (NRSV). This seems a timely word for our situation today. We need to keep our focus on the reality of God, who is present in the rough-and-tumble physicality of our world and is constantly working to create openings for grace and redemption. Accompanying such a focus, we need to remain steadfast in time-honored practices of prayer and contemplation that keep us “tuned in” to God. The stories of faith in our Scriptures include the presence of great evil, of intolerance, and of dire injustice. We should not be surprised to see the same powers and principalities at work in our world today; and by the same token we should expect to see Abba God powerfully at work in our midst. When fear and discouragement knock at our door we can reply “we have faith in God, nonetheless.”

Checking My Pulse

by Davin Franklin-Hicks

I’ve been quiet.

That’s likely not a big deal to you, but for those who know me, I am rarely quiet. It’s an aspect of myself that I sometimes judge, that I sometimes embrace, that I sometimes just observe. There are many rooftop shouters and I happen to be one on a lot of occasions. I’ve come to accept that about myself and let it be.

Yet… I find myself quiet in all the ways I normally echo through the halls of my life. This quiet is because I cannot figure out the first word to the next sentence that would make sense of the loss of life in these endless mass shootings.

I have been reading the words of others and watching us collectively attempt that tried-and-true five-part model of coming to terms with grief as offered by Kubler-Ross. The problem is, once we get past that first stage of denial, entering into anger, we have yet another mass killing that brings us back to that denial. We only get to two-step our way through something that requires so much more to navigate.

“What? Another one? How can this be? I blame [fill in the blank]” and we never get to that elusive next step of bargaining then depression then acceptance.

Denial. Anger. Denial. Anger. Repeat.

My first memory of participating in a collective shared grief was when I was 8 and made to attend an elementary school assembly. We were gathered because the Challenger space shuttle exploded shortly after liftoff and people died. I didn’t fully understand this gathering we were doing. This silence they wanted us to sit with made very little sense to me.

My fellow elementary school peers and I tried to sit quietly, but we were fidgeting and coughing, because we had no idea why we had to suddenly be quiet together. I remember looking around and wishing we could talk again. I wasn’t bored, just completely confused by the whole deal and wanting to get back to whatever we would be doing if this hadn’t happened. As I looked around I noticed that the teachers were crying. Then, the slow dawning of the devastation settled on me.

The space shuttle had a teacher on it. The teacher was going to space, literally doing something out of this world, and that teacher died. Wait, could my teacher die? I remember looking for Mrs. Likes, my favorite teacher, seeing her crying and thinking “That teacher was like Mrs. Likes! Mrs. Likes could die!”

And this was the most tragic thing my new-to-this-world brain could imagine. I was so sad and I cried so hard as I imagined my Mrs. Likes blowing up in a space shuttle.

When we see ourselves or those we love in the death what follows is such a devastation to the soul. This life that we have been taught to nurture could just go away. Just like that. And in violent, murders, someone makes it go away.

“What? Another one? But how can this be?”

I’m trans. I’m queer. I love so many people who are trans and who are queer. This makes relating to the Pulse massacre in Orlando all the more real to me. I was able to cast myself as a dancer on that dance floor without even knowing I was doing the casting. Images came to me with no provocation, like laying my body over my wife’s body because there would be no way on earth I would let her be exposed to death without trying every defense within me.

I have loved ones who are police officers. I could cast them very easily into the badges and uniforms in Dallas, imagining their last breath. I have loved ones who have darker skin than mine and they run a greater risk to die violently and prematurely every single day just because of the bias, prejudice and fear our society has endorsed since the start of our country.

Once we see ourselves and our loved ones in the rampant hate, victimization, and debilitating disparities we can never “un-see” it. And we will often do anything we can to stop it.

Denial. Anger. Denial. Anger. Repeat.

The versions of me, the versions of you, the versions of all those we love are the ones that have their pulse taken from them in places that often had served as sanctuary.

Our souls cry out in denial: “No! Not again! No!”

Our souls grapple with the anger that is oh so appropriate for this loss, “I will stop them! They will not harm me!”

Our souls begin to well up with tears as the bargaining begins, “Please…”

We only can utter the single word of bargaining as it is interrupted by yet another shooting, another body crumpling to the floor. We return to the desperate denial chorus “No! Not again! No!”

Denial.
Anger.
Denial.
Anger.
Repeat.

Then the slow dawning settles on me with an unshakable truth:
That could have been my pulse that slowed and then stopped.
That could have been your pulse that slowed and then stopped.
That could have been the pulse of every single person that we know, every single person we love, that slowed and then stopped.

I’ve been very quiet, stunned into emotional muteness, a seemingly endless moment of silence as I find a new use for my hands that once fidgeted during that assembly thirty years ago. I use those hands now to check my pulse, to feel that life force pumping through my being, to witness the miracle that keeps me breathing and to acknowledge my pulse continues where so many others have ended.

As we go through the dark brokenness that has become the norm, let us never forget how rich, how powerful, how mighty and how unyielding that stubborn flow of life within is in the face of all that attempts to end it. The true grit of the heart keeps on going.

That pulse within you is ancient. That pulse has been giving a rhythm to life in this world since the dawn of time. That pulse is what unites us. That pulse that lives in you speaks to the one that lives in me. The radical act of intentional living in the face of all the destruction is the very thing that steady pulse within has been calling us to all along. And it changes our options, it changes our paths when we invite in the flow of life.

Denial.
It says Look.
Anger.
It says Be.
Bargaining.
It says Please.
Depression.
It says Love.
Acceptance.
It says Live.