{"id":2963,"date":"2013-12-13T15:17:05","date_gmt":"2013-12-13T20:17:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/ellenpainterdollar\/?p=2963"},"modified":"2013-12-13T15:17:05","modified_gmt":"2013-12-13T20:17:05","slug":"on-grace-and-its-absence-one-year-after-sandy-hook","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/ellenpainterdollar\/2013\/12\/on-grace-and-its-absence-one-year-after-sandy-hook\/","title":{"rendered":"On Grace, and Its Absence? One Year After Sandy Hook"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

It has been a year since I gathered with other parents in my children\u2019s elementary school cafeteria, shocked, stricken, and aware that nothing would ever be the same again, after 20 first graders and several women were murdered by a troubled boy with a gun. My own youngest child was a first grader too. I don\u2019t know how those parents feel. I don\u2019t. But I can imagine.\u00a0Below I am reposting a meditation on grace and what happens when grace appears absent. I don\u2019t know how valid my theology is, but it rang true to me then, and does still today. A former rector of mine told me that his post-Sandy Hook sermon was remarkably similar to this post. So there\u2019s that.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

Two months after Sandy Hook, Katherine Willis Pershey and I launched an informal coalition of Christians who support gun law reforms, called #ItIsEnough<\/a>. She and I are talking about what next steps the coalition might take, and we will let folks know when we\u2019ve figured it out. In the meantime, read Katherine\u2019s essay on A Deeper Family titled \u201cGod Damn Guns,\u201d<\/a> this Huffington Post piece<\/a> on progress made and not made in the past year, and this National Catholic Review essay<\/a> on \u201cInexcusable Inaction.\u201d\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

God bless the families who lost those they love on December 14, 2012. #ItIsEnough<\/em><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

As I huddled beneath my flannel sheets the Friday night of the Sandy Hook shooting, two of my children safely in their beds, my oldest daughter out with my husband driving several of her friends home, I surprised myself by whispering, \u201cThere but for the grace of God go I,\u201d that old clich\u00e9 that comes in response to tragedy. Friday\u2019s Newtown, Conn., school shooting, which resulted in 20 children\u2019s murders, took place in my small state, in a town whose bare winter trees and sturdy New England colonials look like home. With three kids in public school, including a first grader (all of the young victims were first graders, although on Friday night all I knew was that they were very, very young), I could too easily imagine with excruciating clarity how a regular day deteriorated into chaos, fear, and murder at Sandy Hook Elementary. I went to bed on that night more aware than usual of how lucky I was to have tucked my children\u2019s warm, breathing little bodies into bed. My gratitude came tied up with the paralyzing knowledge that it could have been my kids\u2019 school violated, my kids\u2019 principal murdered, one of my kids whose last memory on this earth was of wondering why the scary stranger with the gun was pointing it at him.<\/p>\n

And so the clich\u00e9, \u201cThere but for the grace of God\u2026\u201d came unbidden, and I was immediately ashamed of myself for even thinking it.<\/p>\n

I dislike this sentiment, as many Christians do, because of what it implies about how God works in the world. By saying it, I felt I was implying that God\u2014God\u2019s actions, God\u2019s presence\u2014ensured that the most notable aspects of\u00a0my<\/em>\u00a0children\u2019s school day on December 14, 2012, were pizza for lunch and Ben\u2019s 100% score on his spelling test. That implication, I thought, leads naturally to its horrifying opposite\u2014that God was neither active nor present at Sandy Hook Elementary School on December 14, 2012. \u201cThere but for the grace of God\u201d seems to imply that God is ultimately and directly responsible for whether our days end in blessed normality or incomprehensible tragedy.<\/p>\n

I don\u2019t care how poetically Christians spin such a notion with metaphors about God\u2019s ultimate plan being like a beautiful tapestry of which we can only see the chaotic, sometimes ugly backing. There is no divine purpose that explains the random murders of children and their caretakers in an elementary school.<\/p>\n

But Friday night, when that worn, distasteful clich\u00e9 came to me unbidden, I forced myself to think about why I grasped at\u00a0these<\/em>\u00a0words for comfort, about what they really mean.<\/p>\n

I realized that the phrase doesn\u2019t actually speak of God\u2019s will or purpose, God\u2019s action or inaction. We don\u2019t say, \u201cThere but for God\u2019s will\u2026\u201d or \u201cThere but for God\u2019s action\u2026\u201d. I began to wonder if I, in my disgust over all those other terrible Christian clich\u00e9s that imply a divine purpose in tragedy, was misreading this particular clich\u00e9. (\u201cGod won\u2019t give you more than you can handle\u201d? Yes, I\u2019m sure that the parents of those 20 dead children are just so comforted, downright flattered, by the idea that God decided they could\u00a0handle<\/em>\u00a0their babies\u2019 brutal murders.)<\/p>\n

The phrase that popped into my head Friday night talks not about God\u2019s actions or purposes or intentions or will, but of God\u2019s\u00a0grace<\/em>.<\/p>\n

The word\u00a0grace<\/em>\u00a0has many different meanings and layers of meanings. It can be translated as words like favor, mercy, pity, steadfastness, forgiveness, acceptance, love. Grace always occurs in relationship; there is a grace giver and a receiver of that grace. While we can refer specifically to God\u2019s grace manifest in the redeeming life, death, and resurrection of Christ, and grace as God\u2019s willingness to love, accept, and forgive us always and in every circumstance, God is not the sole vehicle of grace. People offer grace to one another, embody grace through actions such as forgiveness and mercy, manifest grace through art, literature, and music. Even objects and natural occurrences can be instruments of grace when we interpret them as tangible signs of God\u2019s love and the fundamental goodness of creation.<\/p>\n

Grace is precisely what made it possible for my children to come home from school on Friday safe, sound, and happy. Grace is precisely what allows blessed normality to define most of our days. Grace is behind every act of care offered to our children by teachers, school bus drivers, crossing guards, careful drivers, coaches, neighbors, other parents. Grace, in the form of mutual trust, understanding, and kindness, allows people with vastly different personalities and histories and values and interests and preoccupations to mingle with each other in the wider world, in schools, shopping malls, neighborhoods, and grocery stores, in relative safety, without conflict or violence, most of the time. Grace stops most people from taking out their anger and pain on other people\u2019s children. Grace allows most of us to go to bed most nights in roughly the same decent condition in which we arose in the morning. Grace is evident in millions of mundane, ordinary acts of care that allow us to live our mundane, ordinary lives.<\/p>\n

There are stories coming out of Sandy Hook Elementary about a staff member who turned on the PA system so that teachers would know that something terrible was happening, of teachers calmly locking doors and herding kids into closets (even pulling out paper and crayons to keep them busy), and at least one story of a teacher who literally put her body between the gunman and her students.<\/p>\n

Those extraordinary acts of courage and care were also grace. Most Sandy Hook students and staff made it back home Friday evening because of grace. And my children and millions of other schoolchildren made it home safely on Friday for the same reason they made it home safely every other school day of their lives\u2014because grace (trust, mercy, steadfastness, love), born of God, marks our human interactions and daily routines more often than it does not.<\/p>\n

But what, then, of the children and teachers who didn\u2019t make it home on Friday? Where was grace then?<\/p>\n

I cannot even begin to craft words that could answer that question, and do not dare even try. I do, however, have a picture in my head.<\/p>\n

I picture that absolute darkness in which you lose all sense of where you are, of what and who is nearby. You lose awareness of\u00a0 your own body, unable to see your own hand raised in front of your face. The darkness severs you from your very self. I think of the scene in the novel\u00a0The Kite Runner<\/em>\u00a0in which the main character and his father escape war-torn Afghanistan in the empty body of an oil tanker truck. It is absolutely pitch black, so the father pulls out his lighted digital watch and holds it in front of his son\u2019s face for the hours-long ride. The dim green light gives the son just enough assurance that he is not alone. The darkness has almost\u00a0but not quite<\/em>\u00a0obliterated him and all he knows.<\/p>\n

I picture gunman Adam Lanza carrying that sort of darkness with him into Sandy Hook Elementary on Friday morning. I wonder if for him, the light of God\u2019s grace was not merely unseen, but actually unimaginable in those final hours of his life. I picture him carrying that palpable, impenetrable darkness, which severed his ability to connect with anyone around him or even with himself, into those school corridors, along with his weapons and rage and grief.<\/p>\n

My\u00a0Oxford Companion to the Bible<\/em>\u00a0says this about grace:<\/p>\n

One senses God\u2019s graciousness by observing the best of human action\u2026human grace imitates and depicts God\u2019s grace.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I wonder if the inverse might also be true: By observing the worst of human action, one senses the void where grace wasn\u2019t, for a few heartrending minutes on a regular Friday morning. I won\u2019t speculate why or how that could be, except to say again that grace occurs in relationship. Givers and receivers. We know from our human relationships that people sometimes cannot or will not receive what is given; I wonder if Adam Lanza was unable or unwilling to even look to see if there was a glimmer of light at the edge of his darkness.<\/p>\n

As with anything to do with relationships, grace is not a static phenomenon that can isolated, marked, and studied, but a mystery.<\/p>\n

May the families of Newtown be awash in that mystery in the days to come. Where sin has increased, may grace increase all the more (Romans 5:20).<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It has been a year since I gathered with other parents in my children\u2019s elementary school cafeteria, shocked, stricken, and aware that nothing would ever be the same again, after 20 first graders and several women were murdered by a troubled boy with a gun. My own youngest child was a first grader too. I […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":424,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[313,44,36,113,714,311,286],"class_list":["post-2963","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-itisenough","tag-christianity","tag-god","tag-grace","tag-gun-law-reform","tag-gun-violence","tag-sandy-hook-elementary"],"yoast_head":"\nOn Grace, and Its Absence? One Year After Sandy Hook<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"It has been a year since I gathered with other parents in my children's elementary school cafeteria, shocked, stricken, and aware that nothing would ever\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/ellenpainterdollar\/2013\/12\/on-grace-and-its-absence-one-year-after-sandy-hook\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"On Grace, and Its Absence? One Year After Sandy Hook\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"It has been a year since I gathered with other parents in my children's elementary school cafeteria, shocked, stricken, and aware that nothing would ever\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/ellenpainterdollar\/2013\/12\/on-grace-and-its-absence-one-year-after-sandy-hook\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Ellen Painter Dollar\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2013-12-13T20:17:05+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"http:\/\/wp.patheos.com.s3.amazonaws.com\/blogs\/ellenpainterdollar\/files\/2013\/02\/ItisEnough-Logo.jpg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Ellen Painter Dollar\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Ellen Painter Dollar\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"8 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/ellenpainterdollar\/2013\/12\/on-grace-and-its-absence-one-year-after-sandy-hook\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/ellenpainterdollar\/2013\/12\/on-grace-and-its-absence-one-year-after-sandy-hook\/\",\"name\":\"On Grace, and Its Absence? One Year After Sandy Hook\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/ellenpainterdollar\/#website\"},\"datePublished\":\"2013-12-13T20:17:05+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2013-12-13T20:17:05+00:00\",\"author\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/ellenpainterdollar\/#\/schema\/person\/5d74c32056fbb89f80f882bf65f46ed4\"},\"description\":\"It has been a year since I gathered with other parents in my children's elementary school cafeteria, shocked, stricken, and aware that nothing would ever\",\"breadcrumb\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/ellenpainterdollar\/2013\/12\/on-grace-and-its-absence-one-year-after-sandy-hook\/#breadcrumb\"},\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"ReadAction\",\"target\":[\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/ellenpainterdollar\/2013\/12\/on-grace-and-its-absence-one-year-after-sandy-hook\/\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"BreadcrumbList\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/ellenpainterdollar\/2013\/12\/on-grace-and-its-absence-one-year-after-sandy-hook\/#breadcrumb\",\"itemListElement\":[{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":1,\"name\":\"Home\",\"item\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/ellenpainterdollar\/\"},{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":2,\"name\":\"On Grace, and Its Absence? One Year After Sandy Hook\"}]},{\"@type\":\"WebSite\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/ellenpainterdollar\/#website\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/ellenpainterdollar\/\",\"name\":\"Ellen Painter Dollar\",\"description\":\"Parenthood, disability, ethics, and the crooked way of grace\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"SearchAction\",\"target\":{\"@type\":\"EntryPoint\",\"urlTemplate\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/ellenpainterdollar\/?s={search_term_string}\"},\"query-input\":\"required name=search_term_string\"}],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\"},{\"@type\":\"Person\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/ellenpainterdollar\/#\/schema\/person\/5d74c32056fbb89f80f882bf65f46ed4\",\"name\":\"Ellen Painter Dollar\",\"description\":\"Ellen Painter Dollar is a writer focusing on faith, parenting, family, disability, and ethics. She is the author of No Easy Choice: A Story of Disability, Faith, and Parenthood in an Age of Advanced Reproduction (Westminster John Knox, 2012). Visit her web site at http:\/\/ellenpainterdollar.com for more on her writing and speaking, and to sign up for a (very) occasional email newsletter.\",\"sameAs\":[\"http:\/\/www.ellenpainterdollar.com\"],\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/ellenpainterdollar\/author\/ellenpainterdollar\/\"}]}<\/script>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"On Grace, and Its Absence? One Year After Sandy Hook","description":"It has been a year since I gathered with other parents in my children's elementary school cafeteria, shocked, stricken, and aware that nothing would ever","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/ellenpainterdollar\/2013\/12\/on-grace-and-its-absence-one-year-after-sandy-hook\/","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"On Grace, and Its Absence? One Year After Sandy Hook","og_description":"It has been a year since I gathered with other parents in my children's elementary school cafeteria, shocked, stricken, and aware that nothing would ever","og_url":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/ellenpainterdollar\/2013\/12\/on-grace-and-its-absence-one-year-after-sandy-hook\/","og_site_name":"Ellen Painter Dollar","article_published_time":"2013-12-13T20:17:05+00:00","og_image":[{"url":"http:\/\/wp.patheos.com.s3.amazonaws.com\/blogs\/ellenpainterdollar\/files\/2013\/02\/ItisEnough-Logo.jpg"}],"author":"Ellen Painter Dollar","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","twitter_misc":{"Written by":"Ellen Painter Dollar","Est. reading time":"8 minutes"},"schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/ellenpainterdollar\/2013\/12\/on-grace-and-its-absence-one-year-after-sandy-hook\/","url":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/ellenpainterdollar\/2013\/12\/on-grace-and-its-absence-one-year-after-sandy-hook\/","name":"On Grace, and Its Absence? One Year After Sandy Hook","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/ellenpainterdollar\/#website"},"datePublished":"2013-12-13T20:17:05+00:00","dateModified":"2013-12-13T20:17:05+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/ellenpainterdollar\/#\/schema\/person\/5d74c32056fbb89f80f882bf65f46ed4"},"description":"It has been a year since I gathered with other parents in my children's elementary school cafeteria, shocked, stricken, and aware that nothing would ever","breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/ellenpainterdollar\/2013\/12\/on-grace-and-its-absence-one-year-after-sandy-hook\/#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/ellenpainterdollar\/2013\/12\/on-grace-and-its-absence-one-year-after-sandy-hook\/"]}]},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/ellenpainterdollar\/2013\/12\/on-grace-and-its-absence-one-year-after-sandy-hook\/#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/ellenpainterdollar\/"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"On Grace, and Its Absence? One Year After Sandy Hook"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/ellenpainterdollar\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/ellenpainterdollar\/","name":"Ellen Painter Dollar","description":"Parenthood, disability, ethics, and the crooked way of grace","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/ellenpainterdollar\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":"required name=search_term_string"}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/ellenpainterdollar\/#\/schema\/person\/5d74c32056fbb89f80f882bf65f46ed4","name":"Ellen Painter Dollar","description":"Ellen Painter Dollar is a writer focusing on faith, parenting, family, disability, and ethics. She is the author of No Easy Choice: A Story of Disability, Faith, and Parenthood in an Age of Advanced Reproduction (Westminster John Knox, 2012). Visit her web site at http:\/\/ellenpainterdollar.com for more on her writing and speaking, and to sign up for a (very) occasional email newsletter.","sameAs":["http:\/\/www.ellenpainterdollar.com"],"url":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/ellenpainterdollar\/author\/ellenpainterdollar\/"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/ellenpainterdollar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2963","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/ellenpainterdollar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/ellenpainterdollar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/ellenpainterdollar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/424"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/ellenpainterdollar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2963"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/ellenpainterdollar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2963\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/ellenpainterdollar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2963"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/ellenpainterdollar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2963"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/ellenpainterdollar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2963"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}