I’ve got my hands full…

Most of us don’t plan for a certain day to be our last.   The people who gathered yesterday for services at the Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh most likely did not expect a crazed, evil murderer to invade their midst and open fire, ending some lives and altering others.  A house of worship is supposed to be a safe place.

Schools are supposed to be safe too.  Movie theaters, concert venues, stores, restaurants, all supposedly safe places, have too often in recent years become bloody patches of hallowed ground where innocent people have had their lives stolen by the likes of yesterday’s madman in Pittsburgh.  The kind of hatred and evil required to perpetrate such violence is beyond my understanding.

I feel so many things…sadness, of course.  My heart, brain and stomach all hurt.  And I realized yesterday that, as a Caucasian, Protestant Christian female, I have enjoyed a life of relative privilege and protection.  Aside from the occasional incident of sexual harassment/discrimination (and fat/body shaming), I have lived fairly unafraid of harm most of the time.

My friends who are people of color/LGBT/Jewish/disabled or otherwise not WASPs cannot claim this feeling of safety.  Matthew Shepard’s remains were finally laid to rest this week in a place where his family feels they will be as safe as possible from the risk of desecration.  TWENTY YEARS after his murder.  A friend of a friend attempted to take her life recently, for what specific reasons I am not sure, but I have to believe that her burden of depression is made heavier by her unique concerns as an LGBT person.  I was raised in a house where racial epithets, derogatory terms for those of different sexual orientation, and religious slurs were regularly used, and entire groups of people were judged to be inferior simply because they were different.

Here’s the thing:  Life is precious.  ALL life.  And as precious as life is, it is equally fragile.  For the rest of my life, however long or short it may be, I hope to reinforce the value of the lives of the people I encounter, in every way I can.  I need to love God by loving my neighbor.  I’ll have my hands plenty full trying to manage that.