Category Archives: Gun violence

March For Our Lives: When Hope and History Rhyme

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Seattle March for Our Lives (Photo by Jim Friedrich)

History says, Don’t hope
On this side of the grave.
But then, once in a lifetime
The longed-for tidal wave
Of justice can rise up,
And hope and history rhyme.

–– Seamus Heaney, “Doubletake”

 

Heaney’s powerful words seem the perfect epigraph for this amazing day, when hundreds of thousands of people In over 800 communities took to the streets to say “enough is enough.” Enough shootings!  Enough victims! It’s time to heal our national gun-sickness. It’s time to choose life.

Have we finally reached a turning point? We’ve seen countless turning points come to naught. We have become well accustomed not to “hope on this side of the grave.” But this new movement, led by highly committed young people not yet practiced in the art of resignation, does feel different. Could this in fact be one of those rare moments, like the end of apartheid or the fall of the Berlin wall, when “hope and history rhyme”?

Seattle March for Our Lives (Photo by Jim Friedrich)

In “Summoning the Sanity to Scream,” posted in the wake of Orlando, I wrote:

Gun worship seems the most powerful religion in America. From presidents to schoolchildren, the blood of countless victims stains its altars. And however much we rage and moan we feel powerless to stay the hand of sacrifice.

 After the joy of marching with thousands of beautiful fellow citizens in the streets of Seattle, and later viewing media excerpts of the utterly compelling young voices at the demonstration in Washington, D.C., I felt myself being awakened from the deadly illusion of inevitability. I began to let myself hope again. The kids are leading the way out of the Slough of Despond. How can we not follow?

Seattle March for Our Lives (Photo by Jim Friedrich)

I was especially moved by Emma Gonzalez, a senior at Parkland’s Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School. Already well known for her prophetic cry against the NRA and its political puppets (“We call BS!”), she began with a brief, heartbreaking roll call of her seventeen dead friends. Then, remaining at the podium, she stood in solemn silence for a very long six minutes––ritually enacting the excruciating duration of the mass shooting.

Ms. Gonzalez had not explained her silence in advance, nor had she invited the crowd to observe it with her. Many in the crowd of 800,000 were undoubtedly bewildered by such an exercise, periodically filling the uncomfortable silence with shouts of “We love you, Emma,” or chants of “Never again.” But the camera also showed many faces mute and tearful. It was a risky liturgical move to immerse that vast multitude in such a long silence (almost unendurable for talkative Americans!) without any advance consensus on its intention or meaning. Those weren’t a million Trappists out there. As far as I could tell from the video, she more or less pulled it off, never quite losing them. I suspect that many will be haunted by the experience for a long time to come. You can watch it here.

Seattle March for Our Lives (Photo by Jim Friedrich)

It is late, I am tired from a lot of walking, and I hesitate to reduce what happened today into a few concluding paragraphs. Something great happened out there, and let’s leave it at that for now. But I am prompted  to make a brief digression before signing off.

As a priest on the eve of Holy Week, I could not help making connections between today’s events and what Christians will be doing over the next eight days. How could I not carry echoes of today’s joyful urban processions into tomorrow’s commemoration of Jesus’ entry into Jerusalem? Both processions involved cheering crowds envisioning a better world; both posited fundamental challenges to the established powers. As for the fate of today’s crowds compared to the one in first-century Jerusalem, I suspect there are crucial differences as well. While every human dream must endure repeated crucibles of resistance and setback, I suspect that the kids on the streets today will not replicate the failures of the Palm Sunday crowd. In that sense, they may prove to be more like Jesus––enduring faithfully with their eyes on the prize––than like the fickle crowd whose “hosannas” turned so quickly to “crucify.”

The other connection I’m thinking about tonight is Emma Gonzalez’s six-minute silence. Founded on an original experience of unimaginable pain and loss, it created a space where suffering might be both remembered and transcended. Like the rites of Holy Week, it engaged the past as something never to be forgotten, something that is intrinsic to the story, but in the context of a future which can contain and redeem whatever has been lost. We all dwell in the provisional space between memory and hope, where we neither forget nor give up. There is always more to our story than we can ever know. Even in the darkest night, God continues to imagine the dawn.

Seattle March for Our Lives (Photo by Jim Friedrich)

At the Easter Vigil next Saturday night, one of the stories we will tell is the deliverance of the biblical Israelites from the powers that enslave them. Instead of an adult reading the story from the Bible, children will act out the Exodus from Egypt. When they reach the Red Sea (adults blocking their way with waves of blue fabric), the congregation will shout “No way! No way!”–– like Congress telling the kids to give up and go home. But Moses will raise his staff, a way will open through the sea, and the Israelites will cross over. One will be carrying a “Never again” sign; another will wear a “March for our lives” T-shirt.

Once they are safely across the sea, Miriam, Moses’ sister, will reflect on what has happened, concluding with a declaration of faith:

“The world says NO.
The power of God is YES!”

 

 

Related posts

The Murderous Hypocrisy of Thoughts and Prayers

Summoning the Sanity to Scream

God Isn’t Fixing This

 

 

 

 

The Murderous Hypocrisy of “Thoughts and Prayers”

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“Gun Crazy” movie title (dir. Joseph H. Lewis, 1950)

I think it’s up to America what gun laws they put in place. I think most people would look at this and assume that people in America would be so shocked by this attack that they would want to take some action.

–– Theresa May, British Prime Minister

When you say––which you always say––‘Now is not the time to talk about it,’ what you really mean is, ‘There is never a time to talk about it.’

–– Seth Meyers, “Late Night” host

 

Las Vegas is the worst American mass shooting so far. But it won’t be the last. As I wrote last year after Orlando:

There’s too much madness, too many guns, too much hate to hope otherwise. We are angry and we are sad, but then what? Gun worship seems the most powerful religion in America. From presidents to schoolchildren, the blood of countless victims stains its altars. And however much we rage and moan we feel powerless to stay the hand of sacrifice.

Each time it happens, causes are discussed, solutions proposed, and we cry, ‘Never again!’ The pundits wring their hands, the NRA and gun-makers pause briefly to reload, Congress turns a blind eye, and then rat-a-tat-tat! More bodies strewn across our public spaces. The cycle repeats itself endlessly.

 Why? Mental illness, social pathologies, alienation, racism, resentment, homophobia, hate, terrorism, profiteering by gun-makers, violence as entertainment, social media copycats, an American predilection for the quick fix and the fast draw—probable causes multiply exponentially.

So far this year, 11,721 people have died from gun violence in the United States. The number of mass shootings in 2017, topped by Sunday’s horror in Las Vegas, is 273![i] That’s about one per day––so commonplace, notes the New Yorker’s Ryan Lizza, “that the political responses to them have become ritualized to the point of parody.”[ii] Flags are lowered at the Capitol, the President quotes some Scripture and denounces “senseless” evil, the NRA suspends gun propaganda for a few days, and every political leader issues statements and tweets of shock and condolence.

We are joined today in sadness, shock and grief. . . Our hearts are breaking. . . All those affected are in our thoughts and prayers. . . We are with you. . .We are praying for you…. God bless you.

But “thoughts and prayers” are hypocritical––and blasphemous––in the mouths of the political gun nuts who would rather see thousands die than threaten the obscene profits of weapons manufacturers.

Washington does not lack voices of conscience. Congressman Seth Moulton of Massachusetts has tweeted: “I will NOT be joining my colleagues in a moment of silence on the House Floor that just becomes an excuse for inaction.” And Connecticut Senator Chris Murphy, a leader on this issue ever since Sandy Hook, calls out his gun crazy colleagues: “Your cowardice to act cannot be whitewashed by thoughts and prayers.” Instead of pretending there are no public policy responses to the epidemic of mass shootings, he says, “It’s time for Congress to get off its ass and do something.”

When elephants fly!

The murderous hypocrisy of gun loyalists praying for shooting victims is disgusting and disheartening to those of us who want religious faith to mean something in the lives of God’s friends. In a memorable headline following the 2015 San Bernardino shooting, the New York Daily News blasted the phony piety of moral capitulation:

GOD ISN’T FIXING THIS: As the latest batch of innocent Americans are left lying in pools of blood, cowards who could truly end gun scourge continue to hide behind meaningless platitudes.

In my own commentary at the time, I wrote: “Platitudes about prayer in the abstract are safe because they have no consequences, unlike real prayer, which always implicates the petitioner in a process of change and action. If we pray for an end to gun violence, we obligate ourselves to do all in our power to reduce it. Prayer is a call for action; it politicizes what we pray for. Prayer is not simply leaving things up to God. It is an act of volunteering to be part of God’s solution.”

After Orlando, President Obama warned that “to actively do nothing is a decision as well.” But what can we do? What will we do? Pressuring lawmakers is a good start. But as the Episcopal Bishops Against Gun Violence remind us, we must also “look into our own hearts and examine the ways in which we are culpable or complicit in the gun violence that surrounds us every day.”

And then, having looked, we must act. As Christians, we are called to engage in the debates that shape how Americans live and die, especially when they die due to violence or neglect. Yet a probing conversation on issues of gun violence continues to elude us as a nation, and this failure is cause for repentance and for shame. It is entirely reasonable in the wake of mass killings perpetrated by murderers with assault weapons to ask lawmakers to remove such weapons from civilian hands. It is imperative to ask why, as early as this very week, Congress is likely to pass a bill making it easier to buy silencers, a piece of equipment that make it more difficult for law enforcement officials to detect gunfire as shootings are unfolding.

Even as we hold our lawmakers accountable, though, we must acknowledge that a comprehensive solution to gun violence, whether it comes in the form of mass shootings, street violence, domestic violence or suicide, will not simply be a matter of changing laws, but of changing lives. Our country is feasting on anger that fuels rage, alienation and loneliness. From the White House to the halls of Congress to our own towns and perhaps at our own tables, we nurse grudges and resentments rather than cultivating the respect, concern and affection that each of us owes to the other. The leaders who should be speaking to us of reconciliation and the justice that must precede it too often instead stoke flames of division and mistrust. We must, as a nation, embrace prayerful resistance before our worst impulses consume us.[iii]

 

 

Related posts

Summoning the Sanity to Scream

God Isn’t Fixing This

 

 

[i] Gun Violence Archive: http://www.gunviolencearchive.org

[ii] Ryan Lizza, “Washington’s Ritualized Response to Mass Shootings” (New Yorker online, Oct 2) https://www.newyorker.com/news/ryan-lizza/washingtons-ritualized-response-to-mass-shootings

[iii] Statement from Bishops United Against Gun Violence Following the Las Vegas Shooting: http://bishopsagainstgunviolence.org/statement-from-bishops-united-against-gun-violence-following-the-las-vegas-shooting/

American violence: Where do we go from here?

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Contemplating Kehinde Wiley's "Morpheus" at the Seattle Museum of Art

Contemplating Kehinde Wiley’s “Morpheus” at the Seattle Museum of Art

O Lord, mercifully receive the prayers of your people who call upon you, and grant that they may know and understand what things they ought to do, and also may have grace and power faithfully to fulfill the same … (Book of Common Prayer)

Every Sunday in the liturgical year has a Prayer for the Day, and this is the one recited in Episcopal churches annually on the Eighth Sunday after Pentecost, which in 2016 happened to be July 10. After a week filled with so much troubling violence in America, it was a prayer we badly needed. How in such times can we know and understand what we ought to do? Who will supply the grace and power to find a constructive way forward?

So many words have been written and spoken in recent days as thoughtful people try to grasp where we are, how we got here, and where we must go. It’s an important and necessary conversation, and I feel the imperative, as all responsible citizens must, to add my own voice to the dialogue. I should say something, but I don’t know exactly what. I can hear T. S. Eliot whispering in my ear: “Wait without thought, for you are not ready for thought.”[i]

I have been on vacation, enjoying the Olympic Track & Field Trials in Oregon, staying in a house without television. I’ve heard and read some news, but have not been steeped in constant reportage. And I’ve not seen a single image of the violence. Although columnist Leonard Pitts interrupted his own vacation in Greece to write that “America has gone mad and there’s no place to hide,” I have maintained a certain religious distance from the immersive angst of endless news, since it is only at our peril that we compromise personal Sabbaths. So I am less informed than most about the events of recent days.

But I have read some commentary, and I was particularly struck by Andrew O’Hehir’s Salon article, “Death in Dallas and America’s existential crisis: Our new ‘civil war’ over the nature of reality.”[ii] He describes an America “divided not just by race, culture and ideology, but between competing versions of reality.” While political conflict, culture wars and violent acts have always been with us, today’s “mutual incomprehension” and a “near-total inability to communicate” have not. Competing sides live in alternative universes where mutually acknowledged facts are hard to come by.

At a recent confrontation between demonstrators and counter-demonstrators, a reporter stood in the street between them, taking notes on the slogans and epithets being shouted from opposite sidewalks. A policeman told her she couldn’t stay in the middle of the street. “You have to stand on one side or the other,” he said.

But is there really no place to stand between irreconcilable polarities, no place where we can honor one another with the gift of listening? O’Hehir puts the question in vivid terms:

“Which would be more useful: For me to confront the fact that large numbers of my fellow citizens really believe that black radicals are waging a race war against white America and the police, and that Obama and Hillary Clinton hope to flood the country with Muslims and Mexicans while building socialism? And then try to figure out what the hell happened, and whether I can do anything to bridge the gap between that reality and mine? Or for me to carry on ridiculing others for their paranoid and superstitious beliefs, and congratulating myself for being a product of my class and educational background?”

Can we explore ways to listen to one another? To learn each other’s names, to hear each other’s stories, to understand one another’s language? To risk being stretched and challenged by alternate perspectives?

Such conversation ought to be be curated in churches, schools, homes and civic spaces. But what about the overheated environment of a protest situation? Even there? What would happen if there were a designated “argument-free” listening space at every demonstration, where people could speak without being judged, and the real pain and anxiety beneath the reactive and polarizing rhetorics could be received and acknowledged with respect and compassion?

Impossible? Then let the artists and saints show us how. Dostoevsky, for example, envisioned an improbable example of compassionate listening in The Brothers Karamazov. The brothers and their father are meeting with the saintly Father Zossima at his monastery in the hope of resolving a bitter family dispute. It doesn’t take long for the elder Karamazov and his son Dimitri to disgrace themselves before the holy monk as they bicker and shout and wish each other dead. But instead of intervening with words, Zossima suddenly kneels before Dimitri to kiss his feet. No one knows what to make of this unseemly action, but the monk later explains that when he realized the depth of Dimitri’s inner pain, and foresaw how much suffering it would bring him, he was impelled to make an extreme gesture of compassion. Instead of being sucked into the specific content of the argument, Father Zossima had perceived the pain and suffering behind it, and responded with unconditional love.

And so must we all. As Bobby Kennedy told a shocked and grieving black audience the night Martin Luther King was shot:

“What we need in the United States is not violence and lawlessness, but love and wisdom and compassion toward one another, and a feeling of justice toward those who still suffer in our country, whether they be white or whether they be black.”[iii]

Related posts

Beyond Punch and Judy: The Art of Nonviolent Resistance

After Paris and Beirut, What Kind of Story Shall We Tell?

[i] “East Coker” in Four Quartets

[ii] http://www.salon.com/2016/07/09/death_in_dallas_and_americas_existential_crisis_our_new_civil_war_over_the_nature_of_reality/

[iii] Speech in Indianapolis, Indiana, April 4, 1968: http://www.jfklibrary.org/Research/Research-Aids/Ready-Reference/RFK-Speeches/Statement-on-the-Assassination-of-Martin-Luther-King.aspx

Summoning the Sanity to Scream

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Painting by Richard Stott (June 13, 2016). Used by permission of the artist.

Painting by Richard Stott (June 13, 2016). Used by permission of the artist.

Investigators at the scene were overwhelmed by the sounds of endlessly ringing phones coming from the bodies, as people continued to call, hoping for their loved ones to answer.

— CNN

We rise and fall and light from dying embers
remembrances that hope and love last longer,
And love is love is love is love is love is love is love is love
cannot be killed or swept aside.

— Lin-Manuel Miranda[i]

 

The Orlando massacre is the 179th mass shooting so far this year in the United States of America.[ii] It will not be the last. There’s too much madness, too many guns, too much hate to hope otherwise. We are angry and we are sad, but then what? Gun worship seems the most powerful religion in America. From presidents to schoolchildren, the blood of countless victims stains its altars. And however much we rage and moan we feel powerless to stay the hand of sacrifice.

Each time it happens, causes are discussed, solutions proposed, and we cry, ‘Never again!’ The pundits wring their hands, the NRA and gun-makers pause briefly to reload, Congress turns a blind eye, and then rat-a-tat-tat! More bodies strewn across our public spaces. The cycle repeats itself endlessly.

Why? Mental illness, social pathologies, alienation, racism, resentment, homophobia, hate, terrorism, profiteering by gun-makers, violence as entertainment, social media copycats, an American predilection for the quick fix and the fast draw—probable causes multiply exponentially.

Songwriter Dan Bern summarized the search for answers in his powerful “Kids’ Prayer,” written after the Springfield, Oregon school shooting in 1996:

And all the world descends to offer up their condolences
And offer up their theories what went wrong
And who and why and when and how:

It’s all the killing day and night on television
It’s all the movies where violence is as natural as breathing
It’s guns and bullets as easily obtainable as candy
It’s video games where you kill and begin to think it’s real
It’s people not having God in their lives anymore
Or it’s all of it, or none of it, or some of it, in various combinations …

As a hate crime directed against the LGBT community, Orlando adds a disturbing new dimension to the plague of gun violence. Whatever blend of madness and calculation drove the killer, he didn’t invent homophobia. He just fed off of it. It is still, sadly, in plentiful supply.

Decades ago, James Baldwin, who was both gay and black, wrote about the American capacity for self-delusion as to the extent of its own sickness. Facing up to our social pathologies, whether racism, bigotry, nativism or gun violence, would endanger the national myth of innocence. Better to remain silent and pretend everything is fine.

“But if we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves” (I John 1:8). A sin unconfessed only makes us sicker. In a 1961 conversation with Malcolm X, Baldwin said:

If I know that any one of you has murdered your brother, your mother, and the corpse is in this room and under the table, and I know it, and you know it, and you know I know it, and we cannot talk about it, it takes no time at all before we cannot talk about anything. Before absolute silence descends. And that kind of silence has descended on this country.[iii]

In a gesture of protest, a Connecticut Congressman has vowed to abstain from the “moment of silence” which seems to be the only Congressional response to mass shootings. “Our silence does not honor the victims; it mocks them,” said Rep. Jim Himes.[iv]

Or in the words of Dan Bern, how many Orlandos will it take before we “summon up the sanity to scream?”[v]

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Note: The Pieta image is by British painter and Methodist minister Richard Stott, a member of last October’s Venice Colloquium. He painted it in response to Orlando. Thanks to Ric for letting me use it here. Check out his website, “I ask for wonder.”

Related Posts

Is the American Dream a Con Game?

How Far Can We Sink?

We are the singers of life, not of death

 

 

[i] Miranda delivered his “sonnet” during the Tony Awards, the night after the Orlando shooting.

[ii] Mass Shooting Tracker

[iii] “Notes for a Hypothetical Novel,” in Nobody Knows My Name, quoted in Nathaniel Rich, “James Baldwin and the Fear of a Nation,” The New York Review of Books, May 12, 2016, p. 42.

[iv] @jahimes, 5:45 pm, June 12, 2016

[v] Dan Bern, “Kids’ Prayer”