... and again, and again, and again, and again...

From D.W.: As much as her life and her work were about love, kindness, grace, forgiveness, mercy, anyone that knew Rachel knew this girl could get angry with the best of them. And when she did, it was righteous. And few things made her more righteously angry than gun violence. She wrote about it often. In the wake of yet another mass shooting a few days ago, I'm sharing a couple of those pieces here. Only a couple. Unfortunately I have to save some for the inevitable next time. And the time after that. These were written about Uvalde and the Pulse nightclub shooting respectively:

Facebook. May 24th. 2022

I am absolutely incandescent with fury. Texas, you are breaking my heart. Please, please soften your hearts and open your eyes. Those babies and teachers and staff had two damn days left in the school year. I wish I believed this would change the conversation around gun violence and mass shootings, but it won’t. We learned that in 2012 when a classroom full of babies and their teachers were murdered in Connecticut. I am grieved for the lives that have been lost and irrevocably changed today. I am asking God to break my heart wide open and help me understand how to do better in my own advocacy for peace and responsible gun control, and I beg you to do the same.

 Facebook. May 13th. 2016

This is a rant.

The last three weeks are kind of blurry for me—they are veiled with tears, memories of lives forever changed or lost, turned tinny by the echoes of memories I would have been more than happy to have not had on the playback track in my head. But here we are.

It’s Monday. The sun is shining, there’s a bluebird sky peeking out at me from between the buildings that tower over my building. There’s fresh coffee in my cup, fresh copy to be marked...and here I am, shedding fresh tears. Because the news...you guys...this news is so damn old. So damn tired. So damnably preventable. And what is old just keeps becoming new, again. And I am sick of it. I can’t think of enough colorful combinations of even the worst swear words to express to you the depth of my dismay, discomfort, disquiet, and abject disgust about any of it.

Three weeks ago, our family navigated another round of MRI’s, pathology reports, and super-crappy news about one of our own. And it drug up memories we haven’t had to ponder over in almost two decades. It’s been a struggle. This week will include more tests, more meetings, more conversations we can’t quite believe we are having. And none of it is preventable. No one could have done anything to prevent Andrew’s brain from growing a tumor. God is sad with us. Jesus is comforting us. We know what we need to do to get him better, and we know it will be hard.

But not a single person in our whole family is saying, you know, cancer just happens. It happens all the time, and there’s just nothing we can do about it, nothing new we can try, nothing we can share with others to help them understand or be aware of symptoms or treatment options or HOPE. We just have to let cancer be cancer. We’ll think and pray about this real hard.

Instead, there is a constant stream of research and coordination being done by our family and their extended community, for our family. We are working, actively on this. And it is hard work. It is not convenient work—everyone would rather be doing something else besides learning about this tumor, EVERYONE. But this is what we are doing, because to not do it would be the worst kind of sin—denial. And when we deny, betrayal is never far behind. (Prayer is powerful, to be sure. I am the last person to negate or make small the incredible power of prayer. But I also know that prayer is action. And if all we do is pray and are not led from those prayers to be active, I’m going to boldly say that we’re probably doing it wrong.) Empty prayer doesn’t get anything done. It does not acknowledge how science and faith and community can come together in miraculous ways to heal what is broken, to bind up and comfort the hurt, to show that love always, always, always wins.

Which brings me to Sunday morning.

But let me back up. One Friday, almost four years ago, I was basking in the glow of newly-wedded bliss and having a nail removed from a tire. And as I was leaving the tire store, I heard the reports about the massacre at Sandy Hook. Babies, you guys. Babies were killed in their classrooms, in the arms of their teachers. With a gun that had been purchased legally, by an individual who should have never been allowed to purchase or own a gun. With a gun that should not be allowed on the civilian market, period. The name of the gun even has the word “assault” right in the damn name. But somehow, not being able to stroll into the nearest gun store and get one is tantamount to not being able to breathe air or drink water. Babies. Some crazed person killed babies. And I thought that surely, surely THIS—the specter of dead children in a classroom, a place that should be safe and free and full of hope—would help us to understand that our right to bear arms is not unfettered. And that because it has been left virtually unchecked, it has become something that terrorizes us, rather than making us feel more secure and safe. But it didn’t.

And so, Sunday morning I woke up (like so many of us) to a news alert on my phone. For the second day in a row (THE SECOND DAY IN A ROW, YOU GUYS) there had been a shooting in Orlando. With a gun that had been purchased legally, by an individual who should have never been allowed to purchase or own a gun. With a gun that should not be allowed on the civilian market, period. And as I watched the death count grow, and the details of the story began to dribble and gush out, I cried. Some of the most fun I have ever had in my life has been with my friends, out dancing at clubs just like Pulse. I have danced with wild abandon, believing that in a space like that, I was safe. I could dance, we could laugh, we could celebrate each other, and leave safely at the end of the night. And for the men and women at Pulse on Sunday morning, that belief was utterly shattered. And for me, too.

I am afraid to go to movie theatres on opening weekends. I shudder when I send my husband out to see the latest comic book movie. I scope out exit strategies whenever we are in public places. I have a nasty habit of checking the news on my phone pretty much constantly to see what terrible thing has happened, now. Terror works. I am terrified.

And let me clarify. I am not afraid of cancer. I am not afraid of being sexually assaulted. I am not afraid of being shot while I’m out and about.

I am afraid of hate. I am afraid of how easy it has become to hate, to exercise it, to spread it, to make excuses for it. And I am sickened by it.

I am sick and tired of hearing, Gun violence happens. It happens all the time, and there’s just nothing we can do about it, nothing new we can try. We just have to let gun violence be gun violence, because without guns, how can we be real Americans? We’ll think and pray about this real hard.

Further, I am sick and tired of hearing, Homophobia happens. It happens all the time, and there’s just nothing we can do about it, nothing new we can try. We just have to let homophobes be homophobic, because without someone to hate based solely on being different from us, how can we win at being most righteous? We’ll think and pray about this real hard.

Sick of it. You can take that sentence and sub in Islamic extremism, The Klan, bigots of any color or creed, failed foreign and immigration policies, and it will still read the same. It’s the same shovelful of bovine excrement, over and over and over. And, unlike in the natural world, this shovelful of doo-doo isn’t making the flowers grow. It’s killing us. Every single day, this refusal to confront hate and discord is killing us.

And let me be clear—I don’t have the answer for how to fix any of it. But what I do know for sure is that we won’t find that answer by just doing the same thing we’ve been doing. Because if we do that, the body counts will just continue to climb. The hits will keep on coming. And if you aren’t ready to do something about it—like call your congressman, get to know your neighbors and dare yourself to fall in love with them—even if they are different from you, no matter how they are different from you, show your babies how to do better—if all you want to do is “think and pray about it,” I would invite you to read the story of my friend Jesus cleaning out the Temple—you can find it in Matthew, Mark, or John. In this moment, even if you are not a Jesus person, see what he does. See how he does it. See why he does it. And go and do likewise.

I have some prayers to pray and some thoughts to think. And phone calls to make, letters to write, people to check in on. Please do this with me. For all of us.

Love,

Rachie