this is what I said (to the best of my immediate memory)

My sisters and brothers, the sermon I intended to preach I will post later this afternoon on my blog page. Should you desire, you can read it there. Another word has been given to me to share with you this day.

As I age, day by day I feel more and more the pains, the sorrows of others. So much so, that, at times, I sleep less, I eat less because I feel more. This past week was one of those times.

Last Sunday, in Las Vegas, fifty-eight of our sisters and brothers were murdered. Over five hundred others were injured. Only God knows how long their recoveries, if they do recovery fully, will take.

Less known, perhaps, is that this past week there were three or four other mass shootings; defined as the death or injury to four or more persons in a public setting. Yet this is not a word about gun control. Though I will say that I am not opposed to the individual, private ownership of guns.

Now, during this past week, as I watched and listened to the news coverage in the aftermath of Las Vegas, especially the stories of the lives of the dead, the testimonies of their families and friends, I heard many words, among them: “kind”, “compassionate”, “always thinking of others first”, “infectious laughter”, contagious smile”. I am struck by a sense of the spiritual capital these folk, none of whom I knew, amassed and shared in their lives of goodwill. Spiritual capital now lost to their families and friends and to us.

In my sixty-five years, one of the hardest things for me to do is to stay in the present. I spend a lot of time reviewing the past, my past and a lot of time anticipating the future. The past is past and the future has not yet come. Las Vegas reminds me that today is here and tomorrow is not guaranteed, thus, the necessity, the essentiality of striving as much as possible to remain in the present.

So, today, as your priest, I beg you, let those you love know, in every way you can, that you love them. Tell them. Show them. Even when they upset you rejoice and be glad that you are upset, for that demonstrates that you are alive to feel and that you love others enough to be upset by what they say or do or don’t say or do. Tell them, show them: I love you…I love you…

So, I say to you now: I love you.

the victims – those who died and their families and their friends and their communities and the world and all of us

Tonight, I watched the reporter and commentator Anderson Cooper’s CNN broadcast, AC360 Special Report: Las Vegas Lost: Remembering the Victims; a compilation of vignettes of the lives of the 58 victims of the mass shooting in Las Vegas on Sunday, October 1.

As I watched, I noted the differences; never hard to seek and to find in any crowd of people. The victims were…

women and men,

young and old (the youngest, 20, the oldest, 67),

mothers and fathers, daughters and sons,

grandmothers and grandfathers, granddaughters and grandsons,

mothers-fathers-daughters-sons-in-law,

wives and husbands, partners and lovers, fiancées,

Asian, black, Hispanic, white,

Americans, mostly, and two Canadians,

small town and big city folk,

outdoor-and-indoor folk,

patriots and rebels,

straight and gay,

people of faith and not,

beer-lovers, wine connoisseurs, and teetotalers,

teachers, truck drivers, medical practitioners, construction workers, military and police personnel, combat veterans and pacifists, students and retirees.

And as I watched, I noted the similarities; never hard to seek and to find in any crowd of people. The victims were lovers of country music who, when shot, bled the red blood of our unmistakably, ineradicably common humanity and died.

And as I watched, I noted the similarities in the testimonials of families and friends who, with tearful, confessional honesty, and who, in their grieving, grappling with their paradoxically excruciating numbness, described their loved ones, almost to a person, as…

“kind”

“thoughtful”

“enthusiastic about life with a contagious smile and infectious laughter”

“filled with love”

“loyal”

“self-giving”

“joyful”

“putting others ahead of herself/himself”

“caring”

“compassionate”

And as I watched, I beheld (never hard to seek and to find) the composite, thus, magnified goodness of these 58 souls – all they did, all they were for all they knew and all who knew them – now lost to their families and friends, to their communities, to the world, and to all of us.

We never will, never can know all the more good these 58 souls would have done. And we who live to exercise our freewill toward the fulfillment of goodwill have lost 58 comrades in the daily labor to make this world a better place. So, let us, by the grace of God and in the strength of the Spirit, redouble our efforts.

predictable patterns?

On October 1, 2017, in another American mass shooting, 59 people were killed (one being the assailant from a self-inflicted gunshot wound) and over 500 injured. By the numbers, this is the deadliest mass shooting in modern American history.

Still, I think, I feel that all whose loved ones died last year in Orlando, Florida or in San Bernardino, California in 2015 or in Newtown, Connecticut in 2012 or in Blacksburg, Virginia in 2007 (or in any other incident in our ongoing national saga of mass violence), for as long as they grieve, which will be for as long as they live, may consider those the deadliest mass shootings.

Since Sunday, as in the instances of all mass shootings, I observe a predictable pattern; some, not all of the elements being…

Every one of us of goodwill, regardless of race or religion or no religion, class or culture, personal philosophy or opinion, decries the murders.

Some of us demand and some of us resist renewed efforts to enact tighter gun control laws; and, in this, some of us in either camp vilify the motives and the morals of some of those in the other.[1]

Still others of us contend that, for the sake of compassion for the mournful, the immediate aftermath of the tragedy is not the time to engage in political combat.

And, inevitably, all of us who live will “get on with it”, going back to living our lives as we have known them, that is, until the next mass shooting.

However, on this last score, something for me, something in me has changed. Perhaps it is because, as I age, I find myself more attuned to and pained by our human trials and tribulations, worries and woes, sufferings and sorrows. Yes, mine own, yet, even more, those of others, all others.[2] Thus, though I will “get on with it”, I won’t, can’t get over it.

What I think, feel, believe this means for me is that my awareness of human mortality and life’s fragility, suddenly, shockingly, sickeningly renewed this past Sunday, will not, will never fade…

What this means is that I, every day, will be more conscious that all of us are mortal, we will die, and that all of us are fragile, our lives, whether by natural calamity or human violence, accident or disease, can be tragically transformed in an instant…

What this means is that I pledge to live with more intention than I ever dared to dream…

And, on this feast day of St. Francis of Assisi, I can think of no greater, grander guide than to live my life in the conscious keeping of the prayer attributed to him:

Lord, make me an instrument of Thy peace!

That where there is hatred, I may bring love.

That where there is wrong, I may bring the spirit of forgiveness.

That where there is discord, I may bring harmony.

That where there is error, I may bring truth.

That where there is doubt, I may bring faith.

That where there is despair, I may bring hope.

That where there are shadows, I may bring light.

That where there is sadness, I may bring joy.

Lord, grant that I may seek rather to comfort, than to be comforted.

To understand, than to be understood.

To love, than to be loved.

For it is by self-forgetting that one finds.

It is by forgiving that one is forgiven.

It is by dying that one awakens to Eternal Life.

 

Footnotes:

[1] Here, I think, in political terms, it has become all too facile to cast Democrats as gun control advocates and Republicans as gun rights activists. For it seems to me that either the stance of gun control or that of the Second Amendment “right of the people to keep and bear Arms” is not the sole interest or desire of any party or persuasion. Indeed, I have been surprised, which, confessedly, reveals more about my biases and assumptions, when discovering that a friend, an avid hunter and combat veteran, is a longtime believer in strict gun laws and another friend, who has never owned or desired to own a gun, is a staunch supporter of individual gun rights.

[2] I wrote about this in a previous blog post, continuing becoming… (August 30, 2017).

all that should have fallen – at a time of tragedy, a Christian prayer

O God, as thousands of Your children gathered under Your gracious canopy of stellar space to celebrate Your gifts of life and music, all that should have fallen as the day ebbed and the night came was the mantle of warm darkness; all that should have fallen upon ready ears attuned to mirth was the wail of the guitar, the beat of the drum, the strains of the human voice singing, telling a story in country song, and the accompaniment of merrymakers joining in gladsome chorus…

What should not have fallen were the bullets, sent down, by the heated, hateful hand of another of Your children, in deliberate rain, falling in a fearsome fusillade…

What should not have fallen were the bodies of Your children struck down, dead or wounded, others scattering, crouching, running in terror…

What should not have fallen to the pitiless ground were the screaming, weeping cries of disbelief, fear, and grief.

O God, as what should have fallen was halted in savage mid-flight by all that should not have fallen, I pray You hail the dead in the heavenly halls of the everlasting Light of Your peaceful Presence, I pray You heal the wounded in mind and heart, soul and spirit, and I pray You hasten the day of Your coming that Your living will that countenances no killing – through Your Spirit, making benevolent habitation in all of Your children – be done on earth as it is in heaven; in the name of Jesus, I beseech You. Amen.