What Was the Dying For?

-Rev Melissa Fain-

The words I used for the title came from Charlie Anderson, the father in the musical Shenandoah. 

Written in the mid-70's, Shenandoah is set at the beginning of Civil War in Virginia. Anderson, who is a widower, had a brood of children, and a nice plot of land. He doesn't want to enter the war, because he doesn't believe it's his war to fight. Eventually, all that changes when his youngest son is kidnapped by Union Soldiers. It's a bittersweet story of humanity's brokenness. If there was a musical that deserves a revival it is this one. It speaks to the tensions that naturally exists when the very people you are apparently against are your very own brothers and sisters. It is a musical for today. 

"They always have a holy cause to march us on to war."
-Charlie Anderson

Last Sunday, the deadliest Church shooting in American History happened. Twenty-Six people between the age of 6 to 72 were killed, and twenty more are still in the hospital from gun shot wounds. It all seems so sureal. It was only the week before the massacre that First Baptist Church of Sutherland Springs set aside time to specifically pray for the victims of the Las Vegas shooting. 

The human mind cannot comprehend senselessness. This is why conspiracy theories exist. We will make up outlandish theories just so we have a reason for something that lacks understanding. 9/11 Truthers, the JFK Grassy Knoll, yes, even the faked moon landing; These are all examples that the real truth was too much to take. Ludicrous ideas were better than facing what really happened. With the moon landing, it was biblical. It forced us to see a world where God was not in the sky. Christians already had prayers that expanded God's heaven, but it was still earth shaking news. The 9/11 Truthers and the Grassy Knoll people just couldn't accept the answer-less truth. Some horrible things have no good answers.

I can almost touch the hem of the Sutherland loss. In other words, there is no way I could fathom what they are going through, but my daughter is six and my son is ten.. My world is filled with potential moments. While it is a clouded future, there are future tears and giggles headed my way.  I'll cry at graduations. I'll celebrate acceptance letters. I'll cry again when they finally step out into the world to blaze their trails. God willing, some day I'll see my two beautiful kids make families of their own. I can barely imagine what it would be like to see that potential wiped away with speeding bullets.

I'd want answers. I'd want solutions. The idea that nothing could be done to bring back that potential would turn me into a puddle of inconsolable tears on my bathroom floor.

"I've heard it all before."
​-Charlie Anderson

Trauma has the ability to draw us together or inch us further apart. It all depends how society reacts to it. 

It's just not helpful to play out whether the situation would have been mostly adverted if the congregation was packing, or if all the weapons were completely banned. Yet, we are going to dust off those old tired arguments like our point of view is going to mend the symbolic and physical wounds.

Then there are those who immediately mock those who are going to pray. 

I'll be the first to say, those who use prayer as a throwaway comment. As in, they say they are going to pray so they can admit to doing something, are as useless as those who do hashtag campaigns. #bringbackourgirls. 

Here's the thing:We react too quickly. Ninety-nine percent of the time those reactions are poor.  They don't help anything. We just know the action was senseless, and our collective nature needs us to make sense of it. It doesn't matter if our reactions make things worse. At least we said something. At least we took a side. It doesn't matter if you do anything once you take that side. We are just dividing ourselves further, while a community continues to mourn. 

That's the real tragedy. We can't let them mourn. We must take a side.and make their tragedy a side note; taking a broken situation, and adding new levels of brokenness to it.

I've heard it all before. They always have a holy cause, to march us on to war. Let's be Charlie Anderson. Let's say no.