Thoughts After the Latest School Shooting

My heart is sore. Sore from the senseless loss of life from yet another mass shooting. Sore for the pain of victims' families, friends, teachers, neighbors, and church families. Sore for the heightened fear and dread of children and teachers, of parents who wonder whether their child will be safe in school today. Sore for a country in the grip of a deadly epidemic of gun violence.

We live in a time when we are impacted as never before by traumatic events. We are connected by instant social media to just about every place in the world. We can watch events transpire, sometimes in real time, as they are filmed by cell phones. We sometimes even have a victim's-eye-view. Our minds, bodies, and spirits react to these things as though they are happening to us.

All this trauma takes its toll. It is a cumulative toll, which can result in a wide variety of symptoms: hypervigilance; the feeling you just can't do enough; bone-deep exhaustion; cynicism, anger, and rage; the need to numb out through alcohol, drugs, distractions, or building emotional walls.

Laura van Dernoot Lipsky, the founder and director of the Trauma Stewardship Institute, has a video on YouTube about the causes and effects of trauma, especially in the lives of those in the helping professions and the justice movement. She also has some advice that is resonating so strongly in my heart that I want to share it with you.

She says, "What the world needs, is for you to do what makes you come alive." The decision to resist the urge to numb out, to tune out, and instead to become more fully present, is one of the few things we truly have within our control. She says, "Your exquisite unique presence is the one thing most needed to disrupt the systematic oppression in the world, and can transform the trauma that is arising all around us."

We hurt. We hurt because we care, because feeling unsafe is an awful thing, because children are the most innocent of victims. Let us honor their memory with yes, our thoughts and prayers, and also by becoming increasingly present to the world. Let us bring ourselves to the conversations on how this wave of violence can be interrupted. Let us be present to one another as we discuss a topic that has many sides, many voices, and many high emotions. Let us not avoid our pain by shaming, shutting down the conversation, or giving up. Let us engage, let us listen, let us keep an open mind, and let us compromise, even as we also testify, petition, march, and vote.

And first and foremost, let us take extreme care of ourselves, so we can, again and again, bring our exquisite, unique, loving presence to the world.

In Gratitude,

Rev. Lynda Sutherland

First Parish Church Unitarian Universalist,

40 Church Street, Northboro, MA 01532

rev.lynda@firstparishnorthboro.org