An American Dream

"An individual dies when they cease to be surprised. I am surprised every morning when I see the sunshine again. When I see an act of evil I don't accommodate, I don't accommodate myself to the violence that goes on everywhere. I am still so surprised! That is why I am against it.

 We must learn to be surprised." 
— Abraham Joshua Heschel

Wednesday night I woke from a deeply disturbing nightmare.  My mom was shot and killed.  She was right outside our house, the house I grew up in, checking to see what a stranger wanted.  It was late at night and I’d wanted to stop her, to tell her to let my dog run out first with her snarling bark that usually annoys me but every once in a while helps me feel safe.  But Mom is too hospitable for such things.  Somehow, instead, I was still upstairs, looking out the bathroom window onto the scene as it happened.

When I woke, my feet were icy and tingling, the way they get when a bad dream has chilled me to the bone.  My mind returned to what had initially kept me from falling asleep in the first place.  Just before bed, my husband and I had read about the shooting in San Bernardino[i], California.  Fourteen people were killed and twenty-one injured at a center for people with mental disabilities who were in the midst of a holiday party.

I am so heartbroken and bewildered.  Why did this happen? How must the surviving loved ones be feeling?  How terrifying and devastating for all those present.  I’m struggling with this tragedy, not only for its own sake, but also because of the tragedies it recalls.  I have read that this is the largest mass shooting in the U.S. since the horrific event at Sandy Hook Elementary three years ago.  More troubling still, this is the 355^th documented mass shooting in the U.S. for this year alone. And surrounding all of this is the ongoing refugee crisis, terrorist outbursts in Iraq, Kenya, Paris and elsewhere; the innumerable wars and pseudo wars wreaking havoc on the lives of men, women and children.

Dwelling on all this I am filled with despair, outrage and, reluctant as I am to admit it, fear.  However, what I am afraid of is not a terrorist attack.  Nor do I dwell on being caught up in the violent outburst of a mentally deranged person.  And certainly not dread of foreign invasion.  I’m afraid of a tendency I’ve noticed to consider purveyors of violence “outsiders.”  I am afraid of a general lack of willingness to look in the mirror and recognize that the violence erupting in schools and churches, in city streets and now even in a residential home, are not about the “other,” they are about us; you and me, as individuals and as part of a community and country.  Each of these acts are awful opportunities to examine our culture and ask how and why it compels and enables such violence.  Yet, again and again, that opportunity is passed over and we are left with only sorrow, rage and despair at the devastating destruction of precious lives.

Part of my heart urges me to continue this train of thought by addressing the refusal of so many to take into consideration how entrenched the U.S. is in the production and distribution of weapons.  It is an enormous and enormously profitable business in which machines made specifically for the purpose of destruction of life are sold with little to no discrimination both within and outside our borders.  Part of my heart is prompting me to illustrate the terror that unfolds in villages that are haunted by drones or where the land has become a permanent battlefield because of unexploded ordnances, or where people live under threat of a night raid, always terrifying, often lethal.

Most of my heart, however, is consumed by the fullness of my womb, filtering everything through the lens of an expectant mother.  When I was at this place of unborn fullness with my son Eli, who will soon be two, a friend asked if I was not afraid to bring a child into this world.  At the time I said no, I was not afraid.  What I didn’t realize then is that being a parent would in fact cause me to be more concerned for safety, more aware of danger, more sensitive to the precarity of life.

 

There were many nights when I would contemplate horrifying scenarios that would end with either one or all of us dead.  I would consider how absurd it is that I should expect and feel entitled to safety in my home when so many others live without it, when so many whose lives are taken had no part in inviting such violence.  However, I continue to see participating in creating and nurturing life (whether through pregnancy and parenting, art, activism or other means) as the greatest act of hope, of love, of resistance to violence and despair that we can offer this world.  And so I pray that fear never be what stops me from sharing in such acts.

And this brings me back to the dream.  I was troubled by the dream not only because of Mom’s death, but because of where I stood as it happened.  I remained removed, hiding within the walls of our house, hiding behind my dog’s ability to intimidate.  It is my mom, in this dream, who is the one stepping out in an act of love.  I don’t consider myself to be in the wrong for having been afraid, but I am disturbed by my choice to follow fear and remove myself or drive away whatever or whoever triggered that fear.

Fear and anger have a place.  They are important signals that tell us something is very wrong.  But staring at the wrong does not lead us to what is right.  I am grateful for the times that I have a visceral response to tragedy, for the times that I am still surprised by violence.  I’m grateful because it means in that moment I am living outside of apathy and inside communion with living beings.  However, if I become overwhelmed with anger or fear, judgment or disgust, I try to redirect those feelings toward grief.  Turning to mourning allows sadness to soften and open my heart, creating a pathway for the grace and wisdom of the Spirit to enter in and do it’s healing, guiding work. 

There is a piece to this dream I failed to recount initially.  As I am standing at the window, I am aware also of the presence of a few of my friends from Witness Against Torture who (in reality and in the dream) had just returned from Cuba.  In the dream I am vaguely aware that they too have tried to get Mom’s attention, tried to ask her to wait.  They, however, are not asking her to wait so they can send out the dog, but so that they can go with her.

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[i]

Note to the reader: throughout this piece there are links that have been attached to statements and ideas that I thought might require further explanation or that I would have liked to share more about but others have already collected the information more efficiently or articulately.  If you are interested in or object to anything that was said, please feel free to follow the links for further exploration.