Must this be?
This post contains discussions of gun violence.
I was at home when the news alert came through. There had been a—
No, don’t start there.
Just a month ago, we were sitting at a kitchen table, talking to a mother whose daughter had been—
No, not there.
I’d get sunburnt over and over again if it meant listening to these brave teenagers—
No, before that.
I was in my Hebrew Bible class when a classmate got up and showed the professor something on her phone. The professor looked at the phone and then at us, a combination of care and concern and tactical analysis. She didn’t hesitate or clear her throat before saying, “There’s an active—
No, not there either.
I was in Scotland when I heard about the horrific—
No, earlier.
I breathlessly followed the news about that bible study—
No, earlier.
I was in the planetarium van when the president came on the radio—
No, earlier.
My first away game with the marching band in college was to Virginia Tech. I still have the pin we wore in memory of—
No, earlier.
I get the reactions. I remember being a kid, trying to read my book by the hallway light as we huddled together in the corner of a classroom made of cheap, moveable walls. It’s like a tornado drill or a fire drill. We’d be out of it after a few minutes. And even though the minutes dragged on, I didn’t worry. It was probably just another rifle left in someone’s—
No, earlier.
I didn’t understand the book. I mean, I understood it. I could read all the words on the page, because I’m sure it was written for a sixth-grader, but I didn’t really get it. This book had been given to me with ceremony, with heft, alongside the Jesus Freak books, and I knew these stories were important, sacred, but I didn’t understand. Why would a school shooter ask someone if they believed in God?
Of course, questions aside, I decided right then and there that I’d do the same thing. As I sat in the library, I pictured myself huddled under the next table over, chairs pulled in as close as possible, even though I knew it wasn’t much of a hiding place. The library was always so bright up here by the exit ramp, with sunlight streaming in through the glass panes in the door and reflecting off the light blue-green carpet. There would be better places to hide, but I imagined myself surprised, finding the first option and diving into it, then huddled, waiting silently as someone stalked through the shelves, black coat trailing behind them as they moved, black boots creaking with each step. I imagined that this is what hide-and-seek prepared you for, this long, anxious period of quiet as you held your breath, hoping the seeker would find someone else first.
I watched this imaginary version of myself struggle a little as the shooter pulled me out from under the table by the hair, then decided I didn’t like that idea. Didn’t the martyrs in the Bible go willingly to their deaths? I rewound the tape in my mind and decided the shooter would crouch down to look under the table and swing the gun around to point at my forehead, barrel pressing into skin. He would ask me if I believed in God and I would look right in his pale, unloved face and I would say yes, just like Cassie.
This is my first memory of gun violence. If I remember right, I was given She Said Yes: The Unlikely Martyrdom of Cassie Bernall shortly after it came out, in 2000 or 2001. If I remember right, too, I received it before we all sat together in seventh-grade English class, watching the news as the second plane hit the Towers. It was before I walked from the computer lab to the band room, trapper keeper under one arm, short sleeves allowing my skin to soak in the September sun, listening to my friends talk about who was going home and who might have family in Pennsylvania or New York or DC. It was before I realized that violence happened to real people, in real time, and that it could have real consequences. It was before I found out how I’d react when there was an active threat at my school.
I’m thirty-three and gun violence in schools has been an ever-present part of the majority of my life in the United States. I’ve practiced lockdown drills and sat, bored, waiting for the police to identify the hunting rifle that someone left in the bed of their truck in the student parking lot, again, and questioned whoever it was to be sure it was a mistake and not a plan. I remember forming the habit of identifying the most secure corner in every classroom the first time I walked into it, usually the one up by the teacher’s desk where the supply cabinet was, but not always. I still feel my stance change whenever I hear about a shooter on a campus, my chest expanding, my shoulders pushing back, making myself as big as possible in the face of it all.
I was doing planetarium visits at an elementary school out in Statesville when the shooting in Newtown happened. I remember turning on NPR and listening to the coverage as I drove to my parents’ house, cheaper than a hotel even though they were forty-five minutes away. You can hear a lot of news in forty-five minutes.
I went back the next day, already thinking about what I’d recommend to my coworkers in case a shooter attacked a school while we were there on a visit. The portable dome is made of fabric, so there’s no sense in hiding in it, but it’s also intended to block out the outside world. We really didn’t have any way of knowing if the school was on lockdown, unless a teacher brought in a walkie or kept an eye on their phone. That might be a solution. Maybe we should add a question on the visit request form about the security plan for whatever space we’d be setting up in, right under the height requirements.
It was a normal day, for the most part, except the kids were quieter, until the second show. Maybe ten minutes in, after the kids were settled in the dome and the show was ramping up, we heard a loud bang out in the gym. The teacher asked me to stop the show, but my hand was already on the mouse, pulling down the volume and pausing the animation. The other teacher kept the kids quiet while the lead and I talked in whispers about our options. In the end, she decided that she would go investigate.
It turned out to be nothing, a gym teacher who didn’t catch the door before it slammed, and we started the show back up, but the adrenaline made it hard to focus. We were all so vulnerable here. I squirmed, knowing my back was to the door. I brought up safety plans during our next outreach staff meeting, amazed we hadn’t had one in place already.
I remember the discussion we had in colloquy about safety plans in churches, too. As seminarians, we were asking ourselves big questions about pacifism and privilege and the role of the state and politics in our churches. I don’t remember the shooting that sparked this conversation, but I remember with clarity what our mentor said. It was an open discussion about the best form of a security plan to prevent a shooter from entering the sanctuary during worship, but as a pastor, our mentor had established that their role was to get the shooter’s attention and try to de-escalate so that the congregation could flee to safety. Maybe all pastors have a hero complex of some kind, but as we discussed, my mind kept flashing back to the day in Hebrew Bible class, when our professor told us we had an active threat on campus. We gathered everyone away from the windows and doors, out of the line of sight for a shooter, and as our professor prayed for us, for the school, and for whoever wanted to do us harm, I stood by the door with a few other students, keeping watch and thinking through whether throwing up a table or hurling a chair would be more effective at slowing down the attacker.
I remember shaking from head to toe, alone in the church, after the man in the truck pulled away one evening before midweek worship when I was a pastor. He had only yelled at me from his truck, but it could easily have been more than that. I’d been brave and patient and calm and strong while he was harassing me, but now that the moment had passed, I was a wreck. I called the pastor from the next town over to come sit with me while I waited on people to arrive for worship.
In some ways, I’m thankful for the martyr complex my sixth-grade reading gave me. It made bravery my default setting in times of crisis and mentally prepared me for keeping a cool head in dangerous situations. I’ve learned that my instinct is to run toward the dangerous situation, whether as a lifeguard or a pastor or a bystander. I’m proud of that. I’m proud that my reflexes propel me toward the vulnerable in times of crisis. I’m proud that I can trust myself to help and that I surround myself with helpers, too.
But I can’t help but fault the logic behind these learned behaviors. As a teenager, I received a passive faith, one that sat back and accepted world events as part of God’s plan. Sure, God called us to spread the gospel to other individuals on a one-on-one basis, personally, just as we had received salvation, but outside of that work, we had to let go and let God. We could be righteous in our day-to-day choices, but all we could do after that is remain faithful when the gun was inevitably pointed at us.
In June of 2006, I sat by myself in the quiet of the cathedral in Dunblane, Scotland. We were there on a youth choir tour, a bunch of loud teenagers excited to be in a new country, many of us for the first time. For some reason, we had gathered out in the graveyard before being released for free time about town, and I had decided, after we broke, to see if we could get into the nearby cathedral. I suppose I wasn’t alone, because I wouldn’t have broken the three-person rule, but in my memory I’m by myself, walking the nave, sitting, looking, walking some more. I came, of course, across the standing stone, and stared at it, circling it, reading the quotes, marking the year—1996. A decade ago. I was mesmerized. It would be years later when I learned what the stone stood for, after I’d moved to Scotland myself and taken the train up on a whim on a rainy day, longing for this little town that had felt so much like home to me, all those years ago.
Gun violence has been woven into the fabric of my life, even into the moments when I’ve felt safest, most at peace. It’s been a fact of my existence, left unquestioned for most of my education, as normal to me as end-of-year exams and getting caught chewing gum. And maybe it’s normal for you, too. If you live in the US, it almost definitely is.
But my sisters and brothers, siblings in Christ, this should not be.
This should not be.
So why is it?
Why is it that we train our children to be martyrs? Why is it that we’ve chosen to implement lockdown drills? Why is it that we let our memorials pile up, day after day, month after month, while families live on with broken hearts and empty places where their children, their brothers, their sisters, their siblings, their cousins, their nieces, their nephews, their parents, their grandparents, their uncles, their aunts, their relations, should be? Why is this the road we have chosen? Why must this be?
Do we not trust that God can change us? Do we not trust the power of the Holy Spirit? Do we not believe the words of Scripture, the wisdom of the Church, when we are told that swords will be beaten into plowshares? Do we not believe that Christ is with us, that we have been made co-heirs with him, and that we are being transformed by the renewing of our mind to see the world as he does? Do we not serve an awesome God through whom all things are possible? Search your heart and truly ask yourself why it is that I could write two thousand words on gun violence without breaking a sweat, without looking up a single fact, without having lived through this hell myself. Ask yourself what we have lost and why we have lost it.
Uvalde.
Buffalo.
Parkland.
Pulse.
Mother Emmanuel.
Sandy Hook.
VT.
Columbine.
Dunblane.
Pray. Reflect. Listen. Learn. Let God’s Spirit move you.
And then, act.