From Death to Life
This week began with the news of yet another mass shooting. Nine dead in a Dallas, Texas suburb, a shocking figure when one considers how many broken hearts, how many lives cut short, the losses to family and community, the bloody emergency rooms, the continued trauma that comes not just from the violence but from the inaction that follows in its wake.
We’ve known violence before, but the trauma is something different now. By some accounts the attacks of 9/11 were less traumatic than they could have been because there was a general consensus that something terrible had happened to our whole nation. The loss was no less real, but there is something therapeutic and even healing when one’s grief is honored and shared across the spectrum of the community. Once you turn towards healing you can begin to respond properly to the crisis.
Yet when deep losses are ignored or wished away the trauma amplifies and runs deeper, as healing and positive change are smothered before they can even begin.
That is sadly our reality and our current trauma: there is simply no logical reason why the United States cannot begin to turn this epidemic of gun violence around, and yet those who hold power to make changes stop any healthy response from ever gaining momentum.
One way to begin to heal, in the hopes that healing will lead to real change, is to name and honor the trauma we as a nation have experienced as we cast our hearts on hope rather than fear. This Saturday, please join us in this work at Trinity’s Urban Farm at 10 a.m. for Guns to Gardens, where we will take guns that have previously been turned in and cast them into the fire, to shape them into something redemptive and life-giving.