A Real and Imminent Threat

We have much to be thankful for, but we’ve also experienced loss this year – as individuals and a society. At Art House America, Dyana Herron writes about some of those things, including the shooting at Seattle Pacific University this year:

Now, for the next few hours, I was truly without a home, in transit between one place and the next, surrounded by people in the same situation, either beside me on the ground, or above me in the air: rising, falling, taking off, landing. When I could, I stood on those moving sidewalks and let them take me to my gate, where I’d board another machine that would propel me forward. And that was fine by me: I was too tired and too afraid to keep moving by myself.

* * *

The first leg of my trip was okay, except we were an hour late taking off, so I worried I’d miss my connecting flight. When we deplaned in Minneapolis, I ran to make it to my gate before they closed the doors. Standing in line to check in, I took out my cell phone and debated whether it was worth it to power up in the few minutes I had. But then I thought, “What if he texted me? To say goodbye again, or that he’s thinking about me, or that he loves me and will come visit me as soon as he can?”

So I turned on my phone and, sure enough, I had several messages. But they were not what I expected. The first was from my best guy friend in Seattle, who, like many of my Seattle friends, works at Seattle Pacific.

It read: “In case you hear on the news, there was just a shooting at SPU on the other side of campus. I’m okay. I was off campus at the time.”

Read the rest here.