Literal trigger warning. I’m going to be talking about guns here. Please take care before proceeding, or as you proceed, to read this.
As I write, it has been 22 years since Margie and I had our first date on Valentine’s Day, 12 since we had our first public ceremony, and 4 since we were legally wed.
It has also been 1 year since the Parkland shooting, which took the lives of seventeen students and staff members, and 11 years since the NIU shooting, which took the lives of six students, including the shooter.
My partner, who was at work on the NIU campus that day eleven years ago, reminds me that celebrating love on Valentine’s Day is a complicated task when memorializing hard things, such as a terrible, violent trauma. Complicated but important.
As I ponder these events, and face my own anger and fear related to them, I’ve found myself thinking about other shootings. I think about the Tennessee Valley UU Church, where a shooter in 2008 opened fire on a congregation watching a chorus of children – and about longtime member and usher, 60-year-old Greg McKendry, who stepped in front of the bullets to protect others from harm, and church members John Bohstedt, Robert Birdwell, Arthur Bolds, and Terry Uselton, and visitor Jamie Parkey, who intervened to restrain the shooter. These people risked – and in McKendry’s case, gave – their lives in service to their beloved community.
I also find myself thinking about Wendi Winters, a Unitarian Universalist who worked as a reporter at the Capital Gazette in Annapolis, MD. Even when she was alive, Wendi was a defender of our faith. As a newspaper reporter, she stood for the search for truth. She also stood for democracy – she was such a defender of democracy that she kept her local representatives on speed dial. On that day in June of last year when a shooter showed up at her newspaper’s office, Wendi stood between the shooter and her fellow reporters. She had just recently been to a training at her UU church about what to do in the event of a shooting, so she knew that the first choice is to run, and then to hide, and then, only if absolutely necessary, to fight. She chose to fight. She ran toward the shooter, yelling at him to get out, throwing a trash can and a recycle bin at him. She gave her fellow reporters time to run. She saved their lives. And she stood up for our faith – for the inherent worth and dignity of every person. She gave her own life to save the lives of others around her. There were too many people at Wendi Winters’ memorial service for it to be held at her UU church – they had to hold it at the much larger Annapolis Creative Arts Center. There were nearly 900 people there. They were there to bear witness to Wendi’s courage, and her love.
And I think about the NIU campus police and others, who rushed toward the danger at Cole Hall eleven years ago, and the scene they encountered when they arrived. And the loving courage it took as NIU responded to the tragedy there – the phone calls and vigils and counseling and memorializing and the massive work of community it took to respond. And about the fact that Mary Kay Mace still memorializes her fallen daughter, Ryanne, by working closely with the Brady Campaign and Everytown and speaking out publicly to prevent gun violence, as some of us from UCE saw her do last year in Springfield on Lobby Day. And I think about the Parkland Students who, in their grief and terror, created the March for Our Lives, and who for Valentine’s Day this year unveiled a ballot initiative to ban the sale of assault weapons. These efforts, too, are courageous love.
As you likely know, since Rev. Julie Taylor’s visit here in July, efforts have been underway to update UCE’s safety protocols. Recently some of our staff and congregants attended a training at another congregation led by Evanston Police, and plans are in the works for training here at UCE as well. In the meantime, I hope we all remember what my son-in-law – who was also on the NIU campus on that day eleven years ago – reminded me of in remembering these events this year: the best time to stop a mass shooting is before it happens. May we elect and support legislators willing to do the crucial work of gun violence prevention. May we support campaigns like Brady and Everytown and Moms Demand Action and Courage to Fight and Americans for Responsible Solutions, March for Our Lives, and the Peace Warriors here in Chicago, who help us understand how to move forward. And may we learn to love one another so courageously that we can stop a bullet before it ever leaves the gun.
© February 15, 2019