On June 5th
one man died and three others were injured by mindless violence right in the
middle of the community that I love. SPU is a beautiful place both for the
grounds that it occupies in the middle of Seattle, and for the imperfect but
loving and gracious community it offers there. That day there was an assault on
my beloved community. One man’s brokenness resulted in a brokenness that has
spilled over to affect the 4200+ students that attend SPU, and the families of
those students. Where can I, a humble seminarian, begin to talk about an event
like a school shooting? I don’t presume the right to something to say in this
situation, but I do have something I want to share: the beautiful response I
observed.
That night,
after hearing about what took place, relentlessly checking the news, and having
a few friends respond inappropriately to what had gone on, I went to church. By
church I mean a bar in Fremont. Two of my closest friends were already there
together and, after checking on me, wanted me to come down. As we sat together
there was more silence than usual, more heaviness than usual, but those were
the people I most wanted to be with. Those were my grieving partners. There
were moments of tender embrace and there were moments of completely understood
silence. We never prayed, though we could have, we never spoke “words of
affirmation,” though we could have done that too; either would have been fine.
Instead, we were together. We were the quiet table at the bar, loving each
other in ways that words cannot, talking to God in ways most prayers don’t. I
was with four of my favorite people on God’s green earth and “Church” looked
like silent presence, the one awkward quiet table at the bar. This is the
church I could not have been more thankful for. We eventually left the bar and
went to my friend’s house to put aside what was going on. None of us could
really forget, but we collectively failed to remember for a little while as we
did our best to laugh a little, and that was holy in and of itself.
It was a
blessing and a curse to be able to pull out my phone and see the latest update.
A blessing because I could be up to date in an instant. A curse because this
instantaneous knowledge had me constantly desiring to know names and what had
happened and so on and so forth. At the same time, the fact that my
Facebook feed was filled with people sharing articles and asking for prayer was
evidence to me of social media at its finest. My people were saying things
like, “My community is broken. Please pray.” Evidence that the one word I have
cynically taken for granted most in the world of social media is still able to
carry very significant weight for those people who are in the midst of their
worst days: praying. The word started to mean something as those I love
directed this word towards me and mine.
At some
point in this whole event I realized, at seminary we talk about weighty stuff
all the time. Theodicy, racism, sexism, disability etc. etc. etc. This time
though, theodicy meant something. What does it mean to me that God is all good
AND all-powerful AND a shooting just happen in the middle of the community that
I love with all of my heart AND he could have stopped it? Suddenly, seminary
became 10billion times more than just an academic venture. Suddenly, it seemed
that those out-there, vague, hard-to-deal-with concepts were becoming far more
real than I had ever hoped they would be… and I know that life will continue to
make them real for me as time continues. And I hope that I have a church just
like the one I was with at that little bar in Fremont.
Where is
God in the midst of all of this? Three places. First, in the moment when I
asked my housemate, who had been previously oblivious, to pray for me, and he
did with all the love in his heart. Second, in the sentiment in my heart and in
others’ that said, “No matter how unjust and wrong this is, I still want mercy
and grace to come together with justice for this man. There was something more
going on inside him.” Finally, and most clearly, in the beautiful response that
has come from the SPU community as a whole, which I am not the only one raving
about.
Sitting
there at the bar with my friends in Fremont, we had our tiny, beautiful
community where honesty and grief were equally welcomed, as they often are
among close friends. For a while, the music in the background was erratically
changing between punk rock and soft folk. When I asked the waitress the favor
of changing it to something a little softer, or at least more consistent, she
happily obliged and the first song to play was Bill Withers’ “Lean on Me.”
There has never been a worse, more cliché time for that song to play and there
has also never been a better time for that song to play. I will never forget
the one-part joy one-part grief tears that streamed as we smiled and sang
together:
“You just call on your brother,
when you need a hand,
we all need somebody, to lean on.”
The community I love oh so deeply has been assaulted and I
don’t know what to do about it.
May God be with the SPU community, Sarah Williams, Thomas
Fowler, John Meis, the shooter Aaron Ybarra, and their families, and especially
with the family of Paul Lee, the young man who died. If you are the praying
type I would ask you to pray for my community as we prepare to take finals
despite the tragedy, the families of all the affected, and for Aaron Ybarra. He
is clearly a broken man and needs God’s hand just like the rest of us. Even if
you don’t pray, please remember that he is a human being, just like you, even
if he has failed to see others that way.
