As I write this what we know is fifty people are dead, murdered. It is unclear how many more are wounded. The number I’ve heard is over fifty. How many of that later group will join the first, who knows. Only time will reveal this.
This was flat out horrific.
Now in Orlando right now people need to be tended to, and I think by and large they are. There are many others across this country and elsewhere who are directly touched for many reasons. And, from that, there is an ever widening circle of care and concern. So, of course. A word. A hand. We need to remember each other. To hold each other.
And there is a host of responsibility to be laid bare.
First, foremost, this is the act of an individual. He has committed an unspeakable act. And he is dead at his own hand.
But there are other places that share responsibility for this horror. We certainly can blame the gun culture and our fetishized 2nd amendment, which in our country puts virtually no limit on who has access to weapons meant for nothing but killing people. We can also blame Isis and its deluded ideology for giving him a place to put his smoldering hate.
Before people extend that to all muslims, or to Islam itself, a suggestion. There are other and similar hateful ideologies festering within our culture. Religious sentiments within the dominant religion that support and echo that hatred of others, and whose adherents whisper, usually, of the terrible things to do those others should they ever be given the chance. I’ve written elsewhere of my visceral fear of the Dominionist Christianity and their desires to “re-take” America.
Now Islam, Christianity and Judaism, the dominant religious traditions in our culture all have shadows that we need to be aware of. And, at the same time, we can hold more than one thought in our heads, in our hearts at a time. They also offer rich and beautiful and challenging perspectives on the human condition. So, at the same time, those who are responsible for feeding this particular horror need to be held to account, and we need to be aware of poisons within our own body politic, and religions that foster such things.
And. There’s something else here that I think so important to notice.
In my circles there is a constant barrage of self-criticism about our culture and our history. The process has merit. Without looking we miss the shadows, and who has been left behind, and without self-awareness can perpetuate some very bad things. And, this criticism is not sufficient. There is also that which is worthy, and which needs to be seen, and honored, and, today, we need to remember it needs defending.
Speaking of being able to hold two things in our heads, in our hearts, we are also heirs to a rare thing in human existence. We in our liberal bourgeois society have birthed something exciting. This open society that we are privileged to be part of is a true child of the West. It starts as the inheritance of the Greek philosophical tradition preserved imperfectly within Judaism and Christianity. Then birthing into the Enlightenment as the institutions that allow our rich emphasis on the value of the individual. And with that an ever expanding and profound treasuring diversity of views and lives. In my view in recent decades this open society has been exponentially enriched by the wisdoms of Africa and Asia, all the Asias, as well as the indigenous wisdoms of our own first nations, each with their rich traditions challenging, clashing, integrating, blending, enriching. As someone said, not a melting pot, the wrong image for what is happening. Another more accurate image is a mosaic, rich and beautiful. But even that fails, because it is dynamic. Wonderful. Frightening. Beautiful.
And this is something to note. What’s happening here is not happening everywhere.
In fact it exists and flourishes while surrounded by forces that would stifle it, would extinguish the flame that it represents. It has to borrow a phrase, enemies domestic and foreign.
And, let’s be clear, the people who show what this openness can be are women, sexual minorities, and racial and ethnic minorities, the people who have always been with us but who have been targeted by the preservers of purity and crumbling status quos as living examples of what is going wrong. And that wrong is ever greater openness, ever greater respect, ever greater questioning.
In another context a German theologian asked who will speak for the others knowing in the last analysis it is speaking for us all.
Of course, right now, it is time to bind wounds, and to help in the healing. As best any of us can.
And. We need to remember. And we need to know. And we need to protect what needs protecting.
So much depends upon it…
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