Tough Week in Connecticut

Slaughter of the Innocents

     This, as my tiny number of readers know, is not a political blog. I am not interested in writing about the second amendment, or gun rights, or any other such thing. My opinion on these issues does not matter. In fact, my opinion on any issue does not matter. I write here mostly just to get my own head screwed on straight.

     This was a hellish, horrible, murderous week for gun violence in my neck of the woods. I live and work in Connecticut. I am a music teacher. One of my colleagues who lives in the town in which I teach was gunned down by her husband this week. He shot her four times in the chest over some argument or the other. I worked with her when she ran the after-school strings program in my school for a time. She was from Russia and played the violin and was an amazing player and a good teacher. This year, one of my colleagues shot his own son in a case of mistaken identity when acting in defense of his sister who lives next door, a tragedy so awful that I cannot begin to comprehend how he feels every day. Today someone broke into a classroom in a town not far from where I live and where I work, and gunned down an entire kindergarten. 18 children are gone.  

    There are no words, no words at all, which can offer condolences for those parents. There is nothing I, nor anyone else for that matter, can do to ease their suffering. The only thing I can do is pray for them, and for the deceased. “Eternal rest grant unto them, O Lord, and let perpetual light shine upon them. May their souls and the souls of all the faithful departed rest in peace.”

     The children who died I have no worry for. They are perfectly happy and content, in the welcoming embrace of an all loving Father. The ones they have left behind: the grieving parents, the brothers, sisters, grandparents, aunts and uncles, will have a pain and a hole in their lives and families that are impossible to fill, and will never be filled. Yes, over time the pain may become more bearable. Yes, (hopefully) they will come to recognize that there can be a spiritual relationship with their loved one still, and they will take some small solace from the sure knowledge that they will be reunited with their loved ones some day. Yet the hole will be there, until they too go to be with the Father. This will never be something they “get over.” Ever. 


      Then, there is the shooter, who is also dead. What sort of combination of narcissism and rage inspired his actions? Or rather, did mental illness play a role? What demons were with him? Is he one of the (hopefully few) souls suffering an eternity of torment, now that he has taken his mother's and so many children‘s lives along with his own? Or was he shot by a policeman? Can we hope that he, by some miracle of Divine Mercy, in the moments before the bullet ended his life, had time to authentically and completely repent of his actions and embrace a new direction?

     The teachers who put their lives on the line to protect their students have my appreciation and respect. They may not have society’s at large, but they sure as hell have mine. I am grateful to each and every one of them. My cousin teaches in that building. She is a relative and a colleague, and protected her students. I am so grateful to her.

     All this death by gun violence this week has left me shell shocked. All of it is so close to home. These are people I know. My cousin, the music teacher at that school, whom I regard as a hero and a colleague role model, sang at my wedding. She could have died today just going to work. I am tired, typing furiously while trying to get at what I am feeling, and I am angry at myself for even engaging in the exercise, for who am I to think my worthless thoughts matter, or feel anything, when other parents have lost children?  


      Look around yourself for minute. Aren’t you overwhelmed by all the hatred, anger, and violence you see? This violence strikes so close to home. There has been so much of it. It feels like it is just the physical manifestation of the violence I see all around me all the time: on TV, on the radio, and online.... especially online...

    The vitriol, hatred, and bile that spew forth from every corner is overwhelming. God help me, in the past I have even participated in it. People coming up today imbibe a steady diet of anger and rage and learn only to blame others for everything they perceive to be wrong with the world. Ever notice how with us human beings, it is always... always... the other guy's fault. If our first thought about this tragedy was not for the children, the parents, the teachers, the community, and the churches in Newtown Connecticut, but was rather about the second amendment, or about democrats, or about republicans, and how those people are responsible, then we need to look carefully in the mirror and do some soul searching, because we are part of the problem. What we lack (and I am as guilty as anyone else) is the ability to see that we, all of us, are responsible for the filth with which we surround ourselves. 
 

     Violence, porn, murder, and rape are our entertainment. Just turn on the TV. Our politics is a zero sum game of personal destruction. Our political ideologies are so engrained that few of us have the temerity to be friends with those with whom we disagree. In our Churches we would rather split apart and label each other heretics over this or that political issue than truly work.... TRULY WORK... for unity with one another. Everyone is degraded by sin, but we only have the ability to see it in others. Everyone’s reason and intellect are darkened by the fall, but we only have the temerity to see the stupidity in others.  Everyone has this violence somewhere in them, and we only recognize it in the other. 

     Is there hope for all this, any way to redeem what happened? I know only a few things: God is real. He lives. These children live with Him (I have SURETY about that). Hopefully the innocent adults who died were ready. I have hope for all of them. I ask God to give me the grace to think about the shooter with something other than anger, hatred, and malice. I ask that He give me the grace to feel sorrow. I ask that He teach me to pray and hope that, in that moment of time right before he died, he had an instant, a moment of clarity, a crack in his heart so consumed with sin (or illness) that he could truly and freely repent and come to know Christ’s mercy. 


      Gun violence. There is so much of it. This is supposed to be a hunting blog. Children and colleagues are dead this week. In large numbers.  So let me return to my theme of hunting and being a sportsman: I choose not to have guns in my house. It is a choice I do not regret. The only gun I will ever need is a 12 gauge, and I will get it when my children are older. It will live in a gun safe. It will fire slugs for deer and shot for birds. I ask you: what the hell else do any of us truly need? Handguns? Assault rifles? Armor piercing bullets? What the hell for? Those weapons only have one purpose, and it is not putting meat in the freezer.

    Do we choose to buy these things because we can’t trust the state to be reasonable and allow us our shotgun and our bow, or we can’t allow them a monopoly on serious fire power? The first is an irrational reaction to a concern that may be reasonable, but the second? Are we still seriously making those sorts of fanatical arguments? That is lunacy. What if we were reasonable and sat down and said, as sportsmen, “look, this is what we truly need. We need our bows. We need one maybe two different rifles for different game. Let’s work together. What can we do about gun violence while ensuring our right to hunt and enjoy the outdoors is respected?” 


     What if the sportsman community took the risk and reached out first? Yes, there are people who think that the gun did this, not the shooter, people who think that hunting deer is murder, people who think there is no reason to own any gun (even a muzzleloader) or even a bow for any reason.

     But how many such people are there, really? Aren’t most folks reasonable, decent human beings, marred by the fall but doing the best they can? Given the fact that children are dying every day due to gun violence, can we afford not to reach out now? Maybe if we toned down the rhetoric, toned down the violence of our words (on everything), tried to be more gentle, more loving, more understanding and sane, we could make some progress. Isn’t it time? 
 

     Isn’t it time not to respond in kind to the bile of others, but rather “turn the other cheek” and work to build a less violent, less crass, less godless culture, before it is too late? 


Missing the Mark

Staying Vigilant









Let me be honest: I missed a buck on my last hunt out, and I was embarrassed which is why I have not blogged about the experience yet. Yet if blogging is about sharing one's experiences and learning from them, it is time I addressed this failure and moved on. It was a clear and definite miss so it could have been worse I suppose, although that is little consolation because I missed due to doing something silly and easily avoided.

Our society gives conflicting messages about failure. On the one hand we are told all successful people fail many, many times on the road to success and that it is in fact this learning process that makes success possible. "The only people who never fail are those that never try." We can certainly list many historical examples that prove this rule.

On the other hand, we seem to live in a "fire happy" work environment, where managers go around looking for folks to axe and get more and more out the fewer and fewer people they retain. In my state it was seriously proposed recently that any one in my profession who was fired from any job, for any reason, would lose their license to work anywhere in the state again. That piece of legislation failed. I am lucky to have a union. Most now are not so fortunate.

I for one perceive that a balance has tipped in our society. If the data are any indication, people, especially young men, are so afraid to fail that a smaller percentage are trying: trying to start a business, willing to ask that girl on a date and then stick with it until marriage, willing to take on that tough new challenge, willing to step out of their comfort zone and DO something. This worries me. For some reason people are becoming so prideful that any recognition of failure is perceived as a fatal blow. A society that sends that message isn't going to produce much excellence for very long.

A blogger I admire recently posted this challenging prayer, and his humility and honesty inspired me to blog about my last hunting trip. Humility is the one attribute we probably need the most. We can't be so proud we are afraid to fail for failure is the one thing that teaches us how to succeed. In fact failure makes success possible. Failure is also the one thing that makes holiness possible, for it is impossible to be holy without humility, and it is impossible to develop humility without the sting of occasionally missing the mark.

The concept of missing the mark is often associated with sin, and I want to be clear here: I am not talking about sin. It is (supposedly... I wouldn't know...) possible to, with the help of His grace, eschew sin. When I first truly came to Christ I seriously believed that changing my life drastically in order to follow Him would mean an easy road. I thought that those I knew would recognize the interior change. I thought my performance at work would evolve into something higher as I worked for Him, and I thought that I would be starting a steady climb towards sanctity. I unwittingly had bought into a strange, but just as heretical, version of the prosperity gospel, that I have spent the better part of a decade unlearning.

Here is the hard truth: the day after I had that personal encounter and act of repentance the evangelicals refer to as being "saved," there I was. Yes, I saw the world with new eyes. Yes, certain behaviors disappeared rarely, if ever, to return. Yes, I began a new journey in an, at times, radical new direction. Yes, I had someone to talk to and worship. Yes, I made His word a central part of my life. But I was still... me... and to be honest, I am not at all sure I was a "better" me. The truth is when we find God we get redirected, but the faith journey is a long process that only begins at that moment. We are redirected onto a road that may (and can) lead to sanctity, but those of us who are reality based recognize that there is no guarantee we will get there.

Despite all of our best intentions, our hard work, and our preparation, failure can and will occur. This is as true with archery as it is with life, and we can't quit or be so prideful that we refuse to acknowledge a failure.

So why did I fail? Inexplicably, as I lined up the shot on that buck, I failed to use the peep on my bow string, and only used the pins on my sight. I did this not once, but twice. Buck fever played a role to be sure, so too my euphoria at successfully rattling and grunting him in contributed to this momentary lack of concentration. I have easily practiced that shot 100 times... and I missed.

I doubt it is a mistake I will ever make again, which is why it is failure that teaches us how to succeed. Remember this while navigating our humility bereft culture: when someone shares with you their successes they are not sharing the failures they went through on the way. America loves a "winner." The message that is being lost is that to be a winner you first have to fall on your face many times. Too many of us are too prideful to risk it.