You Should Have Been Safe Here

Mini-hiatus from writing, and I'm not entirely sure why. Busyness, in part, but also distraction and resistance.

Last week, 50 people were killed in two New Zealand mosques. Muslims gathered at Friday prayers were gunned down by a white supremacist, who has been arrested in the attacks.

The image of people at prayer being massacred haunts me. That a hatemonger would capitalize on the devotion and vulnerability of faithful Muslims—gathered en masse, kneeling, shoeless, supplicant—sickens me. The descriptions I have read of worshippers throwing themselves over one another's bodies to shield their neighbors from the bullets, or frantically fleeing (in vain) are both chilling and heart-wrenching.

I have found it hard to contemplate my faith journey faced with the horrors that others endured pursuing their own. I feel at once unduly privileged and somehow complicit. My "thoughts and prayers" for the victims are not enough. Why am I safe in my church when so many others are not? I know that that safety is not guaranteed for me or any other church, temple, or mosque congregant. But because of where I worship, I do feel safer—safer, at least, from a white supremacist attack.

There are no answers here; I struggle to know what action I can take or what consolation I can offer. One thought I had yesterday was to send a note of sympathy and support to the local mosques in my area. While I can't presume to know how their members are feeling, I can imagine the fear and anger they must have. I will begin those notes today.

This is not even close to enough. How can the legions of us who have been so horrified by the New Zealand shootings counter the hatred and harm perpetrated in these attacks? It starts, perhaps, by rejecting the hatred and harm present on a smaller scale in our own lives. Our daily actions must reflect openness, humility, understanding, and love. In a world that can feel so dangerous and discordant, we need to provide—and to be—places of safety and peace, which our family, friends, and neighbors can recognize and rely on.