By David Spangler
Once again, we are called to meet hate with love and the violence of brokenness with solidarity and a vision of our wholeness together. The killings in Orlando break our hearts, but broken hearts find mending by coming together in mutual openness.
We are called to a time of prayer and blessing for those who have been so precipitously and violently taken from this life and cast into another. Relationships have been shattered. Where there was a physical presence, now there is a vacancy, and our grief flows to fill it. We have lost much.
It takes so little to kill: the twitch of a finger on a trigger, a knife in a hand, bullets in a gun, confusion and hatred in the mind. It takes so much more to build a connection with what is strange and unfamiliar, to learn to understand that which otherwise is frightening, to dare to love and to embrace that which is different. This is where courage lies. This is where our humanity lies. This is where our hope for the future lies.
For me, one of the most compelling images from Sunday was that of a mother frantic to find her son and not knowing whether he was alive or dead. With so many bodies, she’d been told it would be hours before identification could take place. As she shared her grief with the reporter, there came a moment when she looked straight at the camera and pleaded, “Please, can’t we all just get along. We are on this earth for such a short time, let’s try to get rid of the hatred and the violence, please.”
There will be volumes of words spoken and written as a result of this tragedy, but none will be truer or more to the point than those of this mother who has lost her only son.
Views from the Lorian Community publishes essays from a team of volunteer writers expressing individual experiences of a long term, committed practice of Incarnational Spirituality (and the general principles shaping such a practice.) If you wish to share how your life has benefited from your relationship with Lorian and IS, please email the editor at drenag@lorian.org. We prefer submissions between 700-900 words. We rarely accept previously published material (including blog posts.) We also reserve the right to decline or to edit your submission. Any accepted submissions will be published in the order that best fits our topic schedule.