ECCLESIOLOGICAL ETCHINGS
May 25, 2022
Guest Writer: Rev. Mariah Newell
In 2018, I was counseling high school camp at Camp Gonzo when Rev. Dr. Andy Mangum asked the campers, “What do you want the Regional Minister to know? What do you want the Christian Church of the Southwest to be talking more about?” One of the topics the youth raised: School Shootings. I heard the youth speak about their fears around school shootings plainly and vulnerably about their fear and their anger at the inaction around school shootings. They said school was a place they are forced to go regardless of if it is safe. There was a youth who had a cousin that was injured in the Santa Fe High School Shooting at camp that year. The highschoolers talked about ways they felt their school administrations could help keep them safe and one of their ideas were clear backpacks. When I said that seemed hard to not have any privacy, one of the youth looked at me and said, “I’d rather lose my right to privacy than die.” I stepped outside and I wept that day. In December of 2021, Klein ISD schools were receiving gun violence threats. Texts went out to parents and it happened to be on a Wednesday youth night. I heard the youth say, “It doesn’t matter. I’m not afraid to die” and “I’m not going to give the shooter the satisfaction of being scared” and “It actually is scary, but it doesn’t matter if we’re scared.” I cried in my car before driving home.
In Jeremiah 31:15 we hear “A voice is heard in Ramah, mourning and great weeping, Rachel weeping for her children and refusing to be comforted, because they are no more.”
Many of us have chosen how we are going to respond to the shooting at Robb Elementary. There is the emotional wave rippling through us calls for policy change, marches, the anger, the sadness, the fighting in comment sections on arming teachers or new gun policies, thoughts and prayers… We sit refusing to be comforted, couched in anger placed in the shooter or systems, but I wonder how many of us have forgotten we…the adults… are scared? Plainly, vulnerably, ugly cry level of scared too.
So afraid, that we have become paralyzed. Paralyzed in anger. Paralyzed in the lie that “this is just the way it is now.” Paralyzed that if we really hear what our children are saying, it will break us.
After 2018, I committed to making sure our children were heard. Their words break my heart every. single. time. But, they force me to openly weep. Their words remind us that they deserve more than anger. They deserve to see how scared we are. They deserve to see us weep, to grieve, to mourn. They deserve to see us care so much we’re not paralyzed. They deserve to see something different this time.
Prayer: God who wept and refused to be comforted with Rachel and her children, weep with us now. Soften our hearts. Take our hands and guide us out of fear. We need your love and comfort. Commit us to the work you need us to do to stop this violence against our children. Amen.
