Turns out there was another school shooting. Yeah, the one in Oregon, not the people who shot the cops in Las Vegas because they didn’t like the government – that was the day before, I think. No, in Portland, Oregon, at a high school, not the university one in Seattle. That’s been a few days ago.

Yeah, it’s a pity, really. The scared kids, the grieving families. It’s a shame. But what are you going to do? I mean, people have a right to have guns. You can’t take that away. It’s in the constitution. I mean, those Cliven Bundy fans who shot the cops and covered their bodies with “Don’t Tread on Me” flags were a militia of sorts, weren’t they? OK, maybe not the most “well ordered militia” in the world, but they had a right to their armed government protest.

And that guy in Seattle, well, sure, it was terrible, but you know he had psychological problems, right? You just can’t fix everything. And if you started taking guns out of the hands of people with psychologi

cal problems, where would it stop? I mean, if I go to a shrink because I’m feeling down, does that mean I should lose my guns? Really, over half of suicides are committed with guns? Yeah, I guess 20,000 a year or so seems like a lot, but what are you going to do? If you took away their guns those people would probably find a way to jump off a bridge or something.

It isn’t fair.
Some idiot is always wanting to take away gun owners’ rights every time a little kid finds a gun and shoots their sister or their friend or their uncle at a picnic. But you know what’s no picnic? A bunch of regulations that say what kind of gun you can have and where you can have it and who is or isn’t allowed to have it. If you want a gun you want it now, not after waiting around for a week while some paper-pusher pokes around in your private business to find out if you’re OK to carry. Why should responsible gun owners have to submit to a bunch of rules and regulations because of a few random events? Thousands of random events? Whatever.

Face it. You know what isn’t cool? The government getting up in your business. You know what is cool? People carrying guns in public. Did you see that picture of the guy carrying an AK-47 around the pharmacy aisle in Target? That’s a bad ass. Nobody is going to mess with anyone while that guy is around. Little children can feel safe when they see that guy with an assault rifle is in the store.

Yeah, I heard about the guy who stopped the shooter at Seattle Pacific University using nothing but pepper spray. Sure, I guess that’s pretty bad-ass in its own way. But then he wrote this pansy-ass letter about praying for everyone involved and how he wasn’t really a hero and how God helped him see that the shooter wasn’t a monster, but a sad and troubled man. What’s with that? Blow away the bad guys, I say. And for that, everyone should have a gun.

letters of schoolchildren

I was feeling a little shaky earlier this week, and it took me a few days to sort it out. I could point to this or that as the reason, but really I know a big part of it is that on Monday morning, there was another shooting. This time the shooting was in a building near a fountain and park where my family and I have gone to play and hang out, and a few blocks from a library where we just were last week for an excellent-and-fun Storytime. We were planning to go again to that same library for that same excellent-and-fun Storytime on Tuesday morning, but it seemed like the best thing to stay home, out of the fray and mayhem of the recovering area, and so we did. And just that would be enough to make me a little shaky—that we didn’t go to a public library storytime because of a shooting.

Then you add to it the photographs and stories of the victims and their families in the newspaper this week, and the choked-up voice of the shooter’s mother on the radio on Wednesday, and it’s all just a little bit too…real. And then you add to that the sense of hopelessness that is palpable right now amongst people trying to pass what I consider totally reasonable gun laws–um, mandatory background checks on people who want to purchase guns? Banning assault weapons? These things seem totally reasonable to me! I feel like our elected representatives are being held hostage by the NRA. So that makes me feel shaky, too.

In Monday’s paper, the one that was printed and delivered well before Aaron Alexis entered Building 197, there was a front page article telling the stories of some of the victims struggling to recover from the April 15th Boston bombing. Halfway into the article, another survivor of the bombing is introduced—Jarrod Clowery. The article talks about how “Clowery’s early days as an inpatient were the darkest; besides his physical injuries, he was deeply depressed and heavily medicated. Then letters began arriving from all over the world, many of them from schoolchildren. ‘They saved my ass,’ he says. ‘I could’ve gone down a dark path.’ His perspective began to change. ….’I got to see in the hospital what we’re capable of in terms of love and compassion,’ he says…. ‘The bomb is one second of pure evil, despicable, the worst. But it’s followed by endless seconds of the good people can do.’”

I know that what I need—what my heart needs, my spirit needs, and my family needs—are more stories like this one. I do not need to absorb more details about what precisely went on, moment-by-moment, in Building 197 on Monday morning. Instead, I need to immerse myself in all the endless seconds of good that followed, that are still unfolding, that were and are already happening, all the time, the little and large kindnesses that create a mostly-civil, mostly-functional society. I need to just take a breath and sit still for awhile and recognize that, without ignoring how much pain there is in the world, in many places, right now, there is also great joy, love, beauty, grace, peace, and gladness. There is goodness, right here, in this apartment that I am tidying up, in the child and parent that are sleeping peacefully in the other room, in the beauty of the fall day that will unfold tomorrow and that has the possibility, still, of being transformative, in a good way, for all of us. There are countless, endless seconds of good that vastly outnumber the awful seconds of tragedy. Yes: we have so much work to do to make this world a more peaceful place. But that work must spring from love of this world, not fear; calm and grounded determination, not panic.

I want to live in the endless seconds of good as much and as often as I can. It is a constant mental adjustment for me, a continual tuning and re-tuning of the instrument that is my brain. If I remind myself to, I gently smile at people, I trust that the person driving behind me is alert and paying attention, I offer a kind word and a breath of patience to those who are helping me. We are all human beings with families and stressors and challenges. May we believe and live in “the endless seconds of good” so that we may, ourselves, contribute to the goodness in our world and reduce, in whatever ways we can, the oceans of pain.

The British social anthropologist Mary Douglas had this to say about institutions:

Inside a religious body you get sects and hierarchies, inside an information network you get bazaars and cathedrals, it is the same, call them what you like. They survive by pointing the finger of blame at each other.

That about sums it up, doesn’t it?

Douglas is most famous for her theory of dirt: She claimed that human groups form solidarity by what we consider disgusting. For example, if your group considers eating sheep’s eyes disgusting, you’re unlikely to become very intimate with the group next door that considers sheep’s eyes a delicacy.

Douglas claims that human groups, or “institutions,” allow those inside the institution to point fingers at those outside the institution. As we stand inside and point fingers, we develop group cohesion: there’s an inside and an outside.

But, it doesn’t stop there.

Douglas thought that first we off-load responsibility for our actions onto an institution, then we begin to allow the institution to think for us. As a matter of fact, Douglas believed that our institutions operate exactly opposite from the way we generally think they do: we think institutions make small, rote decisions for us; but, actually, we allow institutions to do the big thinking for us, and we stick to the small stuff (–you know, such as consuming too many calories and avoiding exercise. Stuff like that.)

Because . . . it’s not easy bearing personal responsibility for the things that institutions such as government do. Yet, if we intend to lead an examined life, we must look in the mirror and ask ourselves what benefits we get from those things we off-load onto institutions.

Let’s think about government . . . oh, say, the United States government: bad immigration policy; institutionalized racism; millions of working poor; gun “freedom” that kills thousands per year, and poorly regulated industry, to name a few problems. Now, ask yourself, What benefits do I get by being in that group?

It’s disturbing.

It’s disturbing because Dr. Douglas is not saying, human beings form institutions and then wag their fingers at outsiders when they aren’t thinking about it or when we get lazy or when we fail to change wrongs. She isn’t saying those other people do that. She’s saying that’s what ALL institutions do. It’s disturbing because a basic fact of human nature is that we form groups, then we lose any ability to act morally concerning those things we have given away to an institution. Then we benefit from the immoral actions.

Now, you can say, “Oh, well, she’s just a crazy leftist feminist postmodernist, so, you know how THEY are!”

Or we can say, “hmm, that’s interesting! How can we use that human propensity both to better understand institutions that we don’t like, and those we do?

How can we use that idea to create institutions that encourage the sort of human action that we see as positive, rather than the sort that we see as negative?

I know you’re already way ahead of me on this . . . ideally, Unitarian Universalist congregations are places where people are not only encouraged, but required to question assumptions. Places where we encourage finger-pointing at systemic injustices, not at the people who may or may not be perpetrating the injustices, for whatever reasons . . .

If we look at Mary Douglas’s ideas from this perspective, they aren’t quite as crazy. Or quite as ivory tower!

Take, for example, immigration.

Consider for a moment that, as nations go, Mexico is not a a poor one. As nations go, the average Mexican is somewhere in the mid-range of income and social well-being for human beings on the planet. It isn’t that Mexico is poor, by international standards, but rather that the income disparity between Mexicans and North Americans is large–as a matter of fact, the disparity is the largest of any two bordering nations on earth.

That goes a long way toward explaining why people might consider crossing a border. To me, anyway, it’s hard to point my finger at a group of people trying to do that.

How have we–and let’s listen to Mary Douglas and include all of us–how have WE—the institution called the USA–responded to the immigration issue? Rather than facilitating the flow of people back and forth across the border, we have tried to stop the flow–we are still following that policy.

Now, I’m old enough to remember when the border was porous. People came here for summer work, then went back to Mexico–they went back home–for the winter. People can’t do that anymore. Because we have spent billions of dollars to stop them. They’re stuck here.

What would you do, if you found yourself stuck in a foreign country, no way out?

First you would go to the embassy, right?

Then you would start calling on your support network . . . family and friends.

Then you would get out your credit cards . . . see if throwing money around might help . . .

What if your loved ones were across the border?

How long would it take before you just took off walking . . . ?

I have a challenge for you: listen to Mary Douglas and get outside your comfort zone. Call yourself on one of your prejudices . . . . Call your own bluff on one of the “institutions” where you sit comfortably and point fingers from . . .

Maybe it’s the institution called race. Maybe it’s the institution called social class. Perhaps it’s the institution called education. Perhaps you wag your finger at close-minded people.

Whatever.

Try reminding yourself this week that, as psychologist Steven Pinker puts it,

“Our minds are organs (like the lungs), not pipelines to the truth.”

Our minds are organs, not pipelines to the truth.

Try it. Actually realize that your brain is an evolved organ and has its limitations. And your brain is NOT an institution.

This week, call yourself on one of your prejudices. Call yourself on one of the things you get away with because of an institution you belong to. Step outside your comfort zone. Actually listen to someone who your prejudice tells you can’t have ANYTHING valuable to say.

Instead of pointing a finger and even wagging it a little, sit back and listen.

Try it.

Perhaps you have heard about Antoinette Tuff, who this week single-handedly prevented a massacre at an elementary school outside of Atlanta. When a man bearing an AK-47 and a variety of other weapons came into the school where Ms. Tuff works as a clerk she did not pull out a gun and shoot him, fulfilling the NRA’s fantasies of what protection looks like. Instead, she chose to respond to the gunman as a human being, not just a crazed killer. She told him her own story of heartbreak and getting through. She prayed. She told him that there was another way out, and invited him to lay down his weapons and give himself over to the police. And he did, without hurting anyone. In case the story isn’t wonderful enough at that, she gave him the opportunity to apologize over the PA system while teachers and students were still huddled in their classrooms.

Now, if you are a proponent of the idea that the best defense is a quick offense, then you will say that this is an anomaly, and that most people with violence on their minds cannot be talked down. While I have yet to see any particular evidence that this conviction is true, it also isn’t my point. If Ms. Tuff had pulled out a gun and shot the man as soon as she saw he was dangerous, teachers and children might have been saved, but someone would still have been shot. And in my theological world every life matters, even that of the gunman. But more than that, in the world of my personal convictions, love matters. Meeting people in their full humanity matters. And the true heroes are the ones who are willing to put their lives on the line in the service of love and humanity.

Antoinette Tuff is clearly a hero. So were the teachers huddled in their classrooms, determined that no child would be hurt on their watch. But you know what? Those teachers were heroes last week, when they didn’t have any idea that their school was headed for the news. They, and countless other teachers returning to school this season, were heroes when they stayed up late designing lesson plans that would engage children in the world of counting or chemistry or world history, working to get young people excited about the process of thinking in a world that is largely more interested in teaching young people to be excited about consuming. They were heroes when they scoured the garage sales looking for books that would make teenagers want to read; when they shared their lunch with a child who didn’t have any; when they stayed in at recess to talk with a child who was acting out in class to find out the source of his anger, rather than just sending him off to the principal’s office.

In the face of systems increasingly built around record-keeping and test-taking there are teachers – not all, but many – who continue to find ways to encourage creativity and critical thinking. In the face of increasing class sizes there are still teachers who still manage to meet each child as an individual, to accommodate each child’s needs and learning style. In the face of helicopter parents, parents working multiple jobs, addicted parents, and families living on the streets, teachers are providing environments where children can experience both responsibility and security. There are teachers – and a wide variety of other school personnel – who day after day meet child after child with love and respect and an  abiding interest not only in who that child is, but also in who they might become.

In my book, that’s some kind of hero.

And so we wake up the morning after, and it wasn’t a dream. The children are still dead, the teachers beside them. It is another day, a gray one, where people and animals must be fed and life will go on no matter how we feel.

Many of us took the occasion, yesterday, to find one another and weep. The people of Newtown wept. The President wept. Many of us watched them online and wept along with them. Many of us gathered, with our families, or friends, or in churches, or online, to weep together.

And today the weeping will continue. But along with weeping, those of us who are not in the center of the tragedy will begin, together, to grope our way along in the darkness and imagine what we might do besides weep. Some will begin researching gun control organizations and join them. Some will call for a March on Washington. Some will argue endlessly on facebook about whether gun control would have helped. Some will call for us, instead or as well, to address the issues of mental illness more aggressively. Some will simply be with their own families, grief sharpening their gratitude for all they have.

Of everything that I heard yesterday, and of everything that was cited by others last night in the three hour online time of mourning that my congregation held on our Livestream channel, the #1 cited words of comfort came not from Scripture or Shakespeare, but from Mr. Rogers. These four words, people lifted up over and over: Look for the helpers. Look for the helpers.

The full context of Fred Rogers quote is this: When I was a boy and I would see scary things in the news, my mother would say to me, “Look for the helpers. You will always find people who are helping.”

And so, yesterday, many of us were awed by the thousands of people who surrounded the scene of the tragedy to help. We spoke with reverence of the courageous teachers who never stopped helping through the whole event. We spoke of first responders and politicians and counselors who helped and will help.

Today, as we wrestle with complex emotions and struggle to imagine what we might do ourselves, how we might go on, I suggest that we use Fred Rogers’ words as our compass. As we are about to take an action, as we are choosing what to do or not do, say or not say, we can ask ourselves, “Does this help? Am I a helper? If someone is looking for the helpers, will they see this? Will my action give hope to children who are looking for it?”

We may have different ideas about what exactly will help. But we have some pretty good hunches. Some things we’ll all agree on. Listening to each other as we process the event will help. Giving a child the most precious gift of all: our full attention, floor or lap time, will help. Engaging in activities which strengthen our connection to our neighbors and our local community will help.

And I believe that strategic and focused action to limit the carrying and use of weapons will help. Better options and care for people with mental illness will help. Some of us, me included, will put some of our helping energy in this direction.

However we are called to help, may we be bold about it. May we allow our commitments, our action, to be visible. May we claim our power to act, to care, to change the world. As we move out into our day, our week, and 2013, may we be part of the healing.