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Perhaps you remember the story about Antoinette Tuff. She’s the woman in Atlanta, Georgia, who was working in the main office of an elementary school when a man burst in with an automatic rifle and 500 rounds of ammunition. Everyone got out, thanks to her.No one was hurt, because she talked to the man, and he heard her, and she talked to the police outside through the 911 operator, and they heard her, too. The chief of police in Atlanta said there is no question that this could have been, and almost was, another Newtown, CT. But it wasn’t, thanks to her.

There is a recording of the 911 call placed by Antoinette Tuff from her office. In it, you can clearly hear how she’s speaking at once to the operator and to the man by her side with the rifle, conveying his demands and his questions, his intention to kill dozens of people. You can hear her relaying back responses from the police, who by now number in the hundreds outside the school with helicopters, weapons and riot gear; how without fail she addresses him as “sir,” so naturally, with no tremor or hypocrisy at all, the way she might address a teacher in the school, or a parent, or the principal, with plain decency, southern courtesy; how at some point in that eternal 13 minutes, “sir” became “baby:”

What’s your name, baby? Michael. Michael Hill. My mother was a Hill! (This is an African American bookkeeper, speaking like this to a young white man in Georgia, who’s just told her he’s mentally unstable and off his medication—a man with a serious weapon who’s just said he has nothing left to live for and means to start shooting any minute.)

She says to him, I know. We all go through something in life. I almost committed suicide myself last year when my husband left me, but I didn’t and look at me now. It’s gonna be all right, baby. You’re gonna be all right. They’re not gonna shoot you. We’re not gonna hate you. That’s a brave thing you’re doing, giving yourself up. I’m proud of you.

She said this after she got him to lie down and lay his gun aside, assuring him that she would stay standing when the police came in so they would know he hadn’t hurt her. She said, I love you. You’re all right, all the while calling him Michael, calling him baby and sweetie and sweetheart and sir.

That woman stood her ground that day. Like the tree that the poet Howard Nemerov describes, she was a giant,

steady as a rock and always
trembling,
her Being deceptively armored, her Becoming deceptively
vulnerable…
To be so tough, and take the light so well,
Freely providing forbidden
knowledge
Of so many things about heaven and earth
For which we should otherwise have no word—
…people are rarely [this] lovely,
And even when they have great qualities
They tend to tell you rather then exemplify
What they believe themselves
to be about…

What is your life about?

Like oak, like willow, like sycamore, this woman Antoinette Tuff exemplified in every gesture what she’s all about. As one writer said about the episode, “Religion in practice is always more beautiful than religion in words.”

In the days that followed, a talk show psychologist praised Ms. Tuff, telling CNN that she had deployed excellent instrumental strategy and an exemplary negotiating style. All this may be true, but she herself had a different explanation and it involved no strategy at all, and it was certainly not about her “style.” She said that what got her through was the teaching of her church to “anchor on the Lord in tough times.”

She anchored on the Lord. The person who sent me the article sent a question in her email: What could that mean for us? What does that mean? The love she talks about sounds a lot like Universalism, like standing on the side of love, but how are we to talk about it?

“Anchor on the Lord” may sound a little churchy to you, or a little too religious, or a lot; too old-fashioned, too theistic, too Baptist, too Christian. So what would you call it? What do you call it, standing up in what Ms. Tuff called “tough times?” What do you call that courage, that radical love, radical empathy, radical grace? What holds your moral roots in place? What holds you to your highest aspiration, your deepest truth, your calling, your longing, your conviction?

Good religion requires good language, clear thinking, but you can’t over-think it, or you might miss your moment, trying to reason it out. In Antoinette Tuff’s situation, there wasn’t time. Reason and logic could have understandably led to panic, but she wasn’t looking for logic, and she wasn’t praying for courage or strength, safety or strategy, quick wit or a way out.

She was praying, she said afterwards, for sufficient love, love large enough to hold Michael, to see the other person in the room, whatever the circumstance, not as a “deranged gunman,” nor even as a threat, but ever and always as a human being, someone with a story and a struggle, just like her, and also singular, a child of God, a person full of his own worth and dignity.

The only thing at risk that day was her integrity, and she would not relinquish it. She would not be moved.

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Rev. Victoria Safford

Lead Minister at White Bear UU Church, Mahtomedi, MN

The Reverend Victoria Safford was called to White Bear Unitarian Universalist Church in 1999, following a ten-year ministry at Northampton, Massachusetts, where she was ordained, and four years as a community organizer with the American Friends Service Committee.A native of New York State, she is a graduate of Vassar College and Yale Divinity School.She is the author of Walking Toward Morning and With and Without Candlelight, both from Skinner House Books, and her essays have been anthologized in many collections. She lives in Mahtomedi, Minnesota with her partner, Ross.

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