Faith communities around the country are shaken by the lingering image of a gunman entering a church in Texas and killing children, mothers, fathers, grandparents.
As a faith leader, this is the time when I wish for hands that could do the work of resurrection and bring good people back to life, waking up on this autumn day, dressing children, preparing breakfast, going to school and work. We grieve for the everyday lives we take for granted that are gone in those harrowing minutes that began as an idea in one man’s head — a grievance that would not go away, that gathered power, and spread suffering.
When my evangelical colleagues gathered in Salt Lake City, I could feel their sadness and anger as we all imagine being the pastor of that church in Sutherland Springs. How could we hold our own people if the gunman had entered our church and killed 26 of our flock? I believe as they do that the power of prayer is real and that it is time to get down on our knees. We must change hearts, as Pastor Mike Gray of Canyons Church in Cottonwood Heights said, and I believe that a change of heart must include strengthening gun laws and their enforcement.
My family roots are in the Big Horn Basin of Wyoming, the place where both of my parents were born. My father kept a shotgun and periodically he and his father and brothers went out hunting for deer.
I believe that hunting is one of the kindest ways for people to get meat to feed their families. My father, who hunted once in a while, kept his shotgun up on the wall of his study. He was a good man, a veteran of World War II and he had a deep belief in the interconnectedness of our world.
One day, he told us about the day he was hunting with his two brothers and they came across a mother coyote and a den full of coyote pups. My father was ashamed of killing those coyote pups and the image of the killing stayed with him through his life. In the killing, he had felt himself change. He had felt that transformation into a killer — not a provider of meat for his family.
The story was a cautionary tale for us, his children. We humans, even good humans, can get caught up in killing, in the power that a gun gives the person holding it. For many people of the mountain states, coyotes have been seen as intruders and pests, as something to kill like one would kill a spider racing across the basement floor. And yet, in that moment, my father’s eyes were opened to the loss of his own humanity.
An extreme version of this loss of humanity is what we see in the scenes of destruction in the church in Sutherland Springs. We have seen over and over again that many human beings cannot be trusted to use guns responsibly. And yet, we are afraid to talk of gun control and educate people to understand within themselves where that line is crossed that takes them out of their humanity and from hunter/provider/protector to killer.
May this incident be a chance for us to look inside, teach our children the lessons of history and our own lives, and renew our efforts to keep guns out of the hands of those who cannot use them responsibly by enforcing and strengthening the laws we have.
Patty Willis, pastor at the South Valley Unitarian Universalist Society.
The Rev. Patty C. Willis is pastor of the South Valley Unitarian Universalist Society, Cottonwood Heights.