Reckoning with our violence

A Good Friday reflection the day after a campus shooting

Good Friday has us reckon with violence. With our violence, because we ought to own it. Here in Florida, the governor has signed a flurry of death warrants lately, inviting reflection on the violent cycle that is perpetuated in our name through state sanctioned execution. Our criminal justice system has sold us a bill of lies naming punishment as justice. From the extremes of execution to the everyday ways we seek to punish and lash out at one another, a punitive orientation to the world just begets more violence. Of that, I am quite certain. We must own the world we have created, through our comfort with killing in our name and mass incarceration. Through our belief in these systems’ false promises of making us safe.

Violence visits all of our communities often, but yesterday mine was impacted by the type that lands us on CNN. A 20 year old white man opened fire on FSU’s campus, killing 2 and wounding 6 more. I was just a ways up the street in downtown Tallahassee when it happened, and I heard the sound of sirens swell from outside my window as I watched it unfold on my tv.

We own this violence, too.

We own it as we let gun culture fester in this country. We own it in how we condition masculinity. We own it in our staunch individualism that stresses supposed rights over communal responsibilities. We own it as a “United Against Hate” symposium, scheduled to be held on campus yesterday in memory of an FSU student who was killed in a 2018 mass shooting at a yoga studio, is cancelled because the venue is now a crime scene for another mass shooting. We own it as kids who survived Parkland now had to live another shooting as FSU students.

We learned that the shooter is also the son of a local deputy. We learned that he was part of the sheriff’s Youth Advisory Council and, according to our sheriff, “steeped in the Leon County Sheriff’s Office family and engaged in a number of training programs that we have, so it’s not a surprise to us that he had access to weapons.” At the same time, reports are emerging of his radical right wing views. We own that, too — the coziness of right wing, white nationalist extremism within the police power. The violence of the state and the violence of white supremacy are too often aligned.

I grieve with my community today, Good Friday. I grieve the two lives tragically lost, those injured, and all those forever impacted by the fear and anxiety of yesterday’s event. I grieve the gun violence that wrecks families and communities every single day, and I grieve the societal impulse to get more and more guns in response rather than turn to peace. I grieve those executed and on death row, those in prison, and the victims of all violent crime.

I grieve Christ crucified, a victim of the world’s violence, and for all the ways we perpetuate his crucifixion in continuing our violent, death dealing ways.

Lord, have mercy.