For What We Have Done, And for What We Have Left Undone: One Christian Response to Las Vegas
I wrote this draft of a response to the Las Vegas shooting for the congregation I serve. It's raw and the wording is fairly unchanged from my first draft, but I thought I'd share here.
Hurricanes. Health care bills. DACA. Silencing and death of Black & Brown people from cops' loaded guns and systemic oppression. And now this. Again. Again.
My Judeo-Christian heritage contains practices and stories of lament, a necessary part of how God and God's people processed and responded to situations of violence, loss, and grief. It is a necessary practice for us as Christians today, as we mourn yet again a senseless moment of violence and death set upon Las Vegas yesterday. Lament, as I basically understand it, means to grieve, take space, and sit in pain. It does not mean to cover it up with activity, or even optimism, or action. It means to physically and emotionally pause, and to link one's experience-- no matter how close or far removed from the situation that is grieved might be--to the story and experience of those most affected. It asks us to ask hard, painful questions about the world and our own place within it-- and to often not arrive at answers.
From my somewhat limited experience of 27 years on Earth, lament is so seldom practiced in the United States-- at least collectively. We are so caught up in cycles of reactivity (and understandably so, considering our political climate) and numbing that doing more than offering our thoughts on prayers on social media appears ludicrous. And yet, when we forget the practice of lament, we make it easier to become numb to the kind of violence that occurred at a country music festival in Las Vegas. And when we're numb to a tragedy on that large a scale, we are also numb to more insidious but less explicit violence--such as the violence of poverty, discrimination and racism, and systems of control that exert their power over us with invisibility and disguised as security or, ironically, freedom.
We have allowed violence to become business as usual. You know this, and I know, and there's no sense in me preaching that over again. But I want us to really practice lament together--to allow ourselves to feel and to be held accountable, and to pause and ponder how the orientation of our lives allows violence to endure. Maybe we'll learn something from it-- something that will protect our lives and the lives of all.
Hurricanes. Health care bills. DACA. Silencing and death of Black & Brown people from cops' loaded guns and systemic oppression. And now this. Again. Again.
My Judeo-Christian heritage contains practices and stories of lament, a necessary part of how God and God's people processed and responded to situations of violence, loss, and grief. It is a necessary practice for us as Christians today, as we mourn yet again a senseless moment of violence and death set upon Las Vegas yesterday. Lament, as I basically understand it, means to grieve, take space, and sit in pain. It does not mean to cover it up with activity, or even optimism, or action. It means to physically and emotionally pause, and to link one's experience-- no matter how close or far removed from the situation that is grieved might be--to the story and experience of those most affected. It asks us to ask hard, painful questions about the world and our own place within it-- and to often not arrive at answers.
From my somewhat limited experience of 27 years on Earth, lament is so seldom practiced in the United States-- at least collectively. We are so caught up in cycles of reactivity (and understandably so, considering our political climate) and numbing that doing more than offering our thoughts on prayers on social media appears ludicrous. And yet, when we forget the practice of lament, we make it easier to become numb to the kind of violence that occurred at a country music festival in Las Vegas. And when we're numb to a tragedy on that large a scale, we are also numb to more insidious but less explicit violence--such as the violence of poverty, discrimination and racism, and systems of control that exert their power over us with invisibility and disguised as security or, ironically, freedom.
We have allowed violence to become business as usual. You know this, and I know, and there's no sense in me preaching that over again. But I want us to really practice lament together--to allow ourselves to feel and to be held accountable, and to pause and ponder how the orientation of our lives allows violence to endure. Maybe we'll learn something from it-- something that will protect our lives and the lives of all.
Right on! Sometimes when it's the freshest is your mind is the best time to write!
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