On June 12th, forty-nine people were murdered. Forty-nine!! Forty-nine members of Orlando’s LGBT community were gunned down in a gay club. After a police officer spotted Omar Mateen and exchanged gunfire with him in the street, forty-nine LGBT people, PEOPLE were savagely snuffed out of existence. That morning I was at church, and was not glued to a TV. However, I was aware of the news, and through the morning, horror settled on me as I watched the number of confirmed dead climb. It may be the saddest I have ever felt in church. The service, which was lead beautifully by our youth, was difficult to follow, and there are parts I don’t remember because my mind kept being drawn back to what was going on one thousand miles away.
My mind and heart wanted to find some grasp of just how deadly this event was, but it was hard. Eventually, I realized that forty-nine was just under half the number of people I worshiped with that morning. This morning, I sat down and hand wrote a list of forty-nine names of people I know. Just off the top of my head. People I have actually had real conversations with and relationships. They are not all deep or abiding friendships, but I can list forty-nine people, and I am sure you can, too. And then, I wept.
I wept because my wife and I had just started watching last night’s episode of the Late Show with Stephen Colbert. After his opening speech, which is a deep and powerful call for Americans to change the script of our cultural response, Colbert’s first guest went to work doing what we do after an event like this. He acknowledged its tragedy, and then he intellectualized it and made it into a product of international terrorism. Then, he called for war. And I mean a real war; the kind where there is an actual declaration from a joint session of congress, and then the nationalization of industries to support such an effort. (The video can be seen here and here.)
As Colbert tried to redirect and focus the questions around Omar Mateen’s birth in the US, it brought me back to something I have written about before. America loves violence. Just Sunday afternoon, and again on Monday, the dominant rhetoric surrounding our country's possible response was all about how we could attack an enemy. Donald Trump started using language that stripped any association to American society from Mateen, and lay the blame at the feet of “these people,” meaning ISIS and his warped understanding of Islam. Responses are not around how American society responds to violence by Americans against Americans because they are members of the LGBT community, and our continuing relationship/fetish with firearms. Instead, it is how does American society respond to some external threat. Focusing on his faith, wipes away a discussion of the shooters own connection to the LGBT people of Orlando, and Club Pulse in particular. And the majority of the proposed responses are violent.
What if our problem isn’t external, but internal?
What if the cause is not just a different religious ideology from our own, but our own inability to grapple with our differences?
What if, in our rush to anger, we miss the root of the evil entirely?
I can’t answer all of these questions, or really give any answers. I am going to use this place to voice my opinions, however. In so doing, I must acknowledge how painful this is for all of us, and it should be. When I reflect on the events of Sunday, June 12th through my lenses as a straight, white, cisgendered male, I have to open up the scope of my vision beyond just that morning. When I do, I don’t find it as something that is just tragic, but the product of our own deep-seated violence. How could we expect something different after some of our political and religious (and here) leaders have advocated for the death of LGBT people? When we talk about this event in retrospect and refuse to recognize that the victims were either members or allies of the LGBT community, or publicly show our callousness by calling for more violence against the LGBT community, what do we think will happen next?
There is a tight feeling that settles in my chest today. It’s not hate but mourning that brings me such discomfort. I’m mourning the loss of life that has occurred, and I am mourning a loss of some of the hope that has buoyed me through past struggles. I do not hate my country, or my faith, or my representatives, or even Donald Trump because of the things that have been said, or not said, before and after this recent act of horrific violence. What we need is mutual liberation, and no amount of hate can bring that about. I, instead, mourn. I mourn our failings, and the loss, and the death of some of my hope.
But I am also reminded today, in the midst of angry words against a people and a faith not my own, that Jesus wasn’t American. Jesus wasn’t a Christian. But I am a follower of Jesus, and one thing he told us to do when things like this happen was to pray for our enemies. In the midst of the last few days, I haven’t done that. But I am going to now, and I am going to write that prayer, in case you want it for yourself.
O God, I lift up to you Omar Mateen.
He has caused a great deal of pain, but for his soul I ask mercy.
For his family, who loved their son, I ask peace.
For the dead, receive them into your care and hold them close as your beloved children.
For the wounded, be near them in their suffering and anoint their scares with your love.
For those who hate, wrap them in the arms of love.
And for us who feel powerless in our mourning, draw us to a new and beautiful day.
Amen
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