Three enormous issues come together in the slaying of nine black church members at Emmanuel AME in Charleston: Guns, mental illness, and race.

Why the U.S.A. has its particular gun culture is complicated at best and frankly mysterious to me.  The role of weapons in our history is not that different from the rest of the Americas – conquering indigenous peoples, fighting wars, hunting, self-defense.  But rates of gun violence are highly disproportionate to other countries with similar economic, governmental, and societal security.  Views on how to curb the violence differ dramatically.  Yet our very inability to talk about the options, much less take significant action and see what the results are, is deeply entrenched.

Mental illness is another subject we scarcely understand or talk about, still shrouded in shame and misunderstanding.  Fear of stigma makes us reticent to share our own experiences of mental illness, in ourselves or our families.  Privacy regulations intended to protect individual dignity end up reinforcing stigma.  Even when we see things in friends that seem out of character or unhealthy, we hesitate to speak up, to get involved.  We detach exactly when connections, relationships, and help are most needed.  While it is uncertain yet just what role mental illness played in Dylann Roof’s action, such deep-seated hatred does not flourish in happy, healthy persons.  Friends noticed a clear shift in him in recent months, but felt unable, unsure, or unwilling to act.

And then there’s race, the subject we can all talk around but is so uncomfortable for most whites to address directly.  Sociologist Robin DiAngelo uses the term “White Fragility” to describe whites’ inability to tolerate racial stress, and demonstrates how our social setting insulates us even from racial awareness.  We are racially comfortable and have developed an unexamined expectation to remain so.  As Dr. Jennifer Harvey explained during her keynote addresses to the Minnesota Conference UCC Annual Meeting in June, even “good liberal Christian whites” prefer the story of racial reconciliation and are ignorant of its failings.  We do not dwell deep enough, long enough, with the painful parts of racial tensions and injustices, some of which result directly from premature reconciliation.  In her book Dear White Christians, Harvey advocates that we replace the reconciliation paradigm as we have understood and exercised it, with a paradigm of repentance and reparation (think of reparation not simply as “direct cash payments” but more as actions – and yes, money – that repair a broken society).

(FYI, both DiAngelo and Harvey identify as white.)

We have a lot of conversing to do – a lot of listening to do, a lot of honest sharing and digging deeper, a lot of learning.  We have a lot of DOING to do – shaping policies, engaging in already-established programs, creating new opportunities and expectations, all to form a society that looks a little more like what Jesus had in mind in using that phrase “the kingdom of God.”  Guns, mental illness, and especially race: conversations we need to have NOW, issues that need action NOW.

First, however, let us honor those whose lives were taken from them, through the power of naming names:

Rev. Sharonda Coleman-Singleton         Rev. Clementa Pinckney

Cynthia Hurd                                               Tywanza Sanders

Susie Jackson                                              Rev. Daniel Simmons

Ethel Lance                                                  Myra Thompson

Rev. DePayne Middleton-Doctor

Long after we are able to recall any of these names, may we honor them with our actions to transform ourselves and our world into the realm of justice, compassion, abundance and mercy that God intends.

Summer is short in Duluth, and for those working 40+ hours during the week, the weekends are particularly precious.  If you are fortunate enough to have a cabin to use or go camping, summer is a wonderful blessing!

Pilgrim Church is a wonderful blessing, too.  When you’re going to be gone on the weekend, we invite you to worship on Thursday evenings this summer.

Thursday services will be held for six weeks, June 25 through July 30, at 6:00 p.m.  The services are smaller, less formal, and perhaps more experiential than most Sunday mornings, and inclusive of children.  Communion will be celebrated each week.  Join us for spiritual refreshment in the second floor chapel.

This Thursday, July 9, focuses upon the meaning of dance in scripture and its power in our embodied, faithful lives.  You don’t have to be a dancer; toe-tapping counts!

The Rev. Dr. Karen Schuder will be leading our worship this coming Sunday, June 21.  Drawing from the story of David facing Goliath (I Samuel 17:37-49) and of Jesus calming the storm at sea (Mark 4:35-41), she will lead us in an exploration of “overcoming fear of the unknown with courageous faith.”  Whether in our personal lives, the life of the church, or twenty-first century life anywhere on the planet, we face continuous “unknowns.”  It may be the rapid change of pace; it may be threats to health; it may be unrest and violence, injustice or poverty.  Fear is a natural response to anything that endangers our comfort or survival.  Courageous faith, if we will find how to tap into it, lets us face such fear squarely so it does not overwhelm us.

When you come, view the artifacts and photographs from the children’s recent presentation of the David-and-Goliath story, “The Rockslinger and His Greatest Hit” on display in the narthex of Pilgrim Church.

Recently, Pilgrim Church offered a ceremony of recognition and blessing for high school graduates.  The following prayer, by Trappist monk Thomas Merton, was shared as part of the rite of passage.  Many persons of many ages have found it speaks to them, wherever they may be on their life pilgrimage.  We share it here with you; may it bless you, whether in your everyday living or in seasons of transition:

My Lord God, I have no idea where I am going.  I do not see the road ahead of me.  I cannot know for certain where it will end.  Nor do I really know myself, and the fact that I think I am following your will does not mean that I am actually doing so.  But I believe that the desire to please you does in fact please you.  And I hope I have that desire in all that I am doing.  I hope that I will never do anything apart from that desire.  And I know that if I do this you will lead me by the right road, though I may know nothing about it.  Therefore I will trust you always though I may seem to be lost and in the shadow of death.  I will not fear, for you are ever with me, and you will never leave me to face my perils alone.     (Thomas Merton, (c) Abbey of Gethsemane)

In his book, The Gift of the Jews, Thomas Cahill notes a radical difference in Judaism, even in its ancient forms, from the surrounding religions.  Other religions, many of them agriculturally-based (like much of Judaism), viewed time as cyclical in an eternally-repeating pattern.  In Judaism, however, there was a sense of the Divine doing new things.  Humanity would not simply continue the patterns of seasons, festivals, life and death; rather, we are on a journey that leads someplace new.  This same view of time as moving forward was certainly picked up by the Christian faith as well.  While the idea of an “end time” is often interpreted in naive and concrete terms, its deeper meaning is to point us toward a fulfillment of purpose.  Until that “end time,” the choices we make do change the path we are on; we are not bound to predestined patterns.

On the other hand, we cannot fail to recognize patterns of human behavior, in individuals and groups.  Family systems theory helps us see the roles and patterns that emerge repeatedly, behaviors that maintain all kinds of systems (families, institutions, societies) as they are.  Even when one’s place in that system is painful, sometimes we prefer it to the unknown, the work needed to change it, and the risk of not succeeding in that work.  With that in mind, it’s easy to see how the newly-freed Israelites were frightened by the journey in the wilderness, and whined about returning to slavery where they understood the world and their place in it (see the book of Exodus).

The human venture is best understood not as a continuous forward trajectory, nor as an endless cycle in the same old rut, but as a spiral.  We do fall into patterns, but we do not fall back to the same old place.  Each time around the circle, we move a little higher.  We are a little further along in our growth.

The spiral model proves a helpful way to understand personal growth, the spiritual life.  In her song, “You’d Think by Now,” Carrie Newcomer laments, “I don’t know how I started down this tailspin. / Why one more time I just did not see it coming. / And you’d think by now I’d have figured out the pattern.”  But the tailspin doesn’t land her at the bottom, at the starting place all over again.  Rather,  she notes that ” Somebody said … ‘All of this stuff is different I know, /  But what is in common has always been you.’ …  I’m starting to see, And the heavens are starry. / And if I’m not too proud I’ll learn to say I’m sorry.”  Each experience teaches us truth, and we begin to learn how to respond to them with patience, grace, seeking and receiving forgiveness, getting up and trying again.

In the corporate human experience, we repeat age-old patterns of power, domination, fear, greed, self-preservation, enacted in all kinds of self-justified bad behavior.  But there are also stories of peace movements defusing violence, legal changes that expand rights to more people, and broad consensus that things like slavery and incest are negatives, not positives, for society at large.  We haven’t ended war or genocide, but perhaps we are lessening them, and responding to them, even possibly preventing some.  Effective “truth and reconciliation” efforts don’t solve everything, but they do create a space for hope.

We need a space for hope in life, in human experience.  The spiral model of human growth suggests that such hope is not misplaced.  There can be healing, newness, justice, abundance, resurrection — not just in the “end time,” but taking form even now, as we inch along the turning path.  In the Christian faith, abundant life — eternal life — isn’t just at the end, but is lived throughout the journey.  Hope is written into the entire story.  Whatever form the “end time” may take, ultimately it is the fulfillment of that hope; that’s the only thing about that “time” that matters.  Until then, we circle and climb, hurt and heal, grow and trust; we live.