―Walter Brueggemann, The Prophetic Imagination
"When he entered Jerusalem, the whole city was in turmoil, asking, 'Who is this?' The crowds were saying, 'This is the prophet Jesus from Nazareth in Galilee.'" Matthew 21:10-11
For many years, I've been listening to our elected leaders call the tragic deaths that result from active shooters in our country "senseless." This mantra of the killings being "senseless" has never made sense to me.
I have wondered why these leaders so consistently use the word "senseless"... could it be because they lack words for how devastated they are by the shootings, or how ashamed they are to be part of our leadership at this time in our history? could "senseless" help shield them from how very helpless they feel? could "senseless" help them shake their heads on camera, walk away from the microphone, and return to other, more manageable priorities?
Maybe joining in the familiar chorus of "senseless" protects them from how completely at a loss they are for how to understand what is happening? perhaps "senseless" serves to some extent to quell their horror at how constrained they are by their roles, by the rules of what they are allowed to say without losing status, and possibly their elected offices, in our society as it currently is?
As the visionary and pragmatic Obama-appointed U.S. Attorney Joyce Alene Vance said via Twitter today, "Follow the money. It's all about making it by selling guns & perpetuating the culture. And we all know that. The answer is to vote out the people who refuse to protect our children. Voters really do have that power."
To help us take action together to protect our children in this democracy, we need to open our minds and hearts beyond what we have so far accomplished--or attempted--or even imagined.
In her 2000 book, All About Love, prophetic scholar and writer bell hooks expresses a courageous vision of how love can heal us. “As a nation, we need to gather our collective courage and face that our society’s lovelessness is a wound.” (p.234)
From her early years in church, through her embrace of Buddhism and eventually calling herself a Buddhist Christian, bell hooks found that “awakening to love can happen only as we let go of our obsession with power and domination….A love ethic presupposes that everyone has the right to be free, to live fully and well. To bring a love ethic to every dimension of our lives, our society would need to embrace change." (p. 87)
In a 2015 New York Times interview, bell hooks proclaimed, “I believe whole-heartedly that the only way out of domination is love, and the only way into really being able to connect with others, and to know how to be, is to be participating in every aspect of your life as a sacrament of love…”
It's time, everybody. Now is our time.
New York Times Interview by George Yancy and bell hooks, December 10, 2015