(Cross-posted from Facebook.)
After past shootings I was subdued. I was sad and angry but still a passive supporter of gun control. Something in me snapped on Friday. Perhaps it is because I cannot so much as look at my own children without being reminded of the victims.
I have probably annoyed and even offended some of my FB friends with the constant stream of posts/links about gun control. I feel every bit as manic as I look right now. I feel like screaming. I feel like begging, and in fact, I have: to any petition that allowed for personal comments, I wrote, "please, please, please". My prayer petitions echo much of the same.
I know that it is a complicated situation, and that gun control alone cannot definitively prevent further gun violence. But I refuse to let complexity be an excuse for complacency. I cannot be silent anymore. Semi-automatic weapons must be, in the words of the Advent hymn we sang on Sunday, "broken asunder". I am quite serious about engaging in a sustained campaign to support gun control reform, and you will hear more about this from me in the weeks to come (unless, of course, you unfollow/unfriend).
All this said: I need, in the words of my friend and mentor, "holy equilibrium." I need to grant myself permission to feel joy. I need to not be submerged by grief and outrage. I'm going to seek beauty. I'm going to give thanks. I'm going to keep lighting those Advent candles. I'm going to lean into the extraordinary hope at the heart of the Christian faith. I'm not going to stop crying, but I'm going to let myself laugh.
Thank you for being my friends. Some of you are near and dear, and some are acquaintances I mostly know through pixels on Facebook. I'm grateful for all of you.
Thank you Katherine. My husband and I have received Friday's news similarly to you-- something has snapped. We are pondering how to make our voices heard-- to make as much of an impact as we can on this issue. Yes it is complex, but there is no way assault rifles and huge magazines being off our retail, show and internet shelves won't make for a safer America.
ReplyDeleteI am a new follower of your blog (and look forward to reading your book, which I just purchased!) I feel the same way you do after last week's tragedy. Thank you for lending your voice to this issue, and thank you, too, for the beautiful paragraph about "holy equilibrium"." Those were precisely the words I needed in order to reconcile how fragmented I feel with moving forward.
ReplyDeleteThank you for this post. I hope the energy rallied by this outrage will unite us to keep working. And I'm stealing this line: "I refuse to let complexity be an excuse for complacency."
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