Bad things come

I didn't write about these things before but now with the profusion of stressful events in my life I feel the need to state them, plainly: 1) When we got back from Mexico, we found that Audrey's house had been broken into. Her computer and mine were stolen. I lost 2 months worth of work, due to a cruel twist of fate that my flash drive had recently been broken. 2) And while we were in Mexico, Aud's minister Scott fell off a ladder and broke both elbows, requiring serious surgery. A few days later, he suffered blot clots in his lungs which required him to be hospitalized again, where he has been for the past week. Our lives have been consumed with this, and poor Scott is the kind of hyperactive person that suffers especially being cooped up. 3)On a more minor note: My cell phone broke and I had to drive to Morristown (1 hour away) to replace it. So needless to say, I was already stretched thin when yesterday happened.

{For those of you who don't yet know what happened... 2 people were killed and 7 injured at my UU church in Knoxville when a gunman came in during the service and opened fire. It is now being investigated as a hate crime, primarily directed at the UU's pro-acceptance views on gays. The whole town is pretty shaken up, and people are being supportive so far, which does help a little. Still it is a very troubling time.}


I need to journal, but some of my friends were also encouraging me to write my thoughts here. So I imagine this will be a combination of a journal and a post, and so I apologize if it suffers in coherence.


I'm afraid I have nothing clear to say, only confusion, contusions, contortions of reality trying to make it fit into something more sensical than what is. I am thankful I was not in church (having decided, fortuitously and at the last minute, to attend Audrey's service). I feel guilty for not being in church too. Admittedly, I did not enjoy all of Aud's service (though her sermon was excellent, of course), and many times I was in there wishing I was at UU that day. And now I think how if I had gone to UU I would be wishing I was at Aud's church-- the way we try to undo time when bad things happen. Audrey preached about this in reference to Scott, and even as she spoke it unfolded across town.


The truth of the matter: When you hear who has died, you are thankful it is not your direct friends, and then you feel like shit because you have just been thankful for another's death, in a way. The emotions are confusing.


Yesterday I cried a lot; then I went to sleep (in the middle of the afternoon) because I couldn't cry anymore. I needed to "reset" my brain. I woke up feeling more numb, and now there is just the constant noise of replaying things in my mind. I have purposefully avoided the media coverage. When I heard my friends describe what happened, it created a movie in my mind which now replays over and over whenever there is an empty moment. It rushes in to fill the space, so there is nothing normal left. It feels like going through life with the radio on some awful static and dissonant song all the time. You picture the sanctuary, the man, the children, the people diving under the pews. Only this time it is YOUR pews, YOUR sanctuary.


There have been so many shootings lately-- most recently at Virginia Tech. And yes, those affected me. I was teaching a class when we all found out, and the students and I processed it. It hit close to home. But this is different-- this was a piece of home.


Also I feel there is something about it being a church, a sacred space that was invaded, violated, torn into. Knoxville is not a liberal town; there are few places where one can be out-- be it about sexuality or other things. I told Audrey last night-- I don't feel like stepping foot in that sanctuary again. The sunny, open white space with the windows that pressed the green into the worship-- all this is now replaced with a chaos and disarrangement in my mind. I dream often of the Asheville UU church I sometimes attended, because that has become my mental church space now... this one doesn't feel peaceful anymore. And yet Audrey is right-- we can't give into that, can't avoid the sanctuary, must go back so that the man who did this doesn't win, so that he doesn't accomplish his goal, which was the ruin our sacred space.


It is easy to find a silver lining. I can see the support that has poured out from all my friends, in both Asheville and here in Knoxville-- I have received calls and texts from Christians, Atheists, Muslims, Greek Orthodoxes, ex-Catholics, etc. Tonight there will be a candlelight vigil at the Presbyterian church next door to our church. The faith community is there, and supporting, offering flowers and concerns and sighs in silence throughout the day.


Audrey and Lydia and Patrick expressed anger at the suspect last night. I hate that I cannot do that right now. I tried. I put on my lesbian punk rock music (Amy Ray's solo album), to the song about what happened in Laramie, to the song with the lyrics that came to me when I rose from my terrible sleep, filled with dreams of out-of-control semis and cameras that took pictures of underwater when they were focused on land. And I played the lyrics over and over in my car, trying to move on to anger:


Poor man do the bidding for the rich man
Those rednecks just doin' what the class folk was thinking
And tolerance, it ain't acceptance
I know you wanted it to be... when you're out of Laramie.


But I can't get angry. Even when the chorus starts, singing "Hey all you jokers, hunting season's over. Hey coalition, lay down your mission." I wish I could get angry at this man, who is probably crazy. But the problem is he isn't, really. He's just an extreme manifestation of an subtler feeling in society.


When this happened I prayed it would be just a crazy man, but my heart feared the worst-- that it would be a hate crime, that we would have been targeted, specifically for the gay-acceptance issue. Because then this man represents a prevalent sentiment in society; he takes it to the extreme, but he carries something not so far from others. And that's why I can't feel angry... because then I feel like I'm angry at so many people, at the man in Aud's church who, when we shared our gratitudes to God said "I am grateful that I work in place where many people aren't Christian, so I can witness to them." And before this, a little child had said "I'm grateful for my daddy stopping drinking." I was teary-eyed and actually found myself having a spiritual moment-- something that doesn't happen for me often in Christian Churches, partly b/c of the bad history-- and then this man just yanked me out of it with his unaccepting comment. It angered me because I thought: first of all, the work environment is NOT a place to "witness" to people, and secondly: can't you just accept people for who they are, why do you have to push your ideas on others? And then I thought: why does he not have something more genuine to be grateful for? It seemed like he was just finding an excuse to "toot his own horn" or something? I know he doesn't represent all of Aud's church by any stretch... but it just made me feel unsafe. He had introduced himself to me before--kind of over-focused on me, seeing I was new-- and I felt subtly like he was trying to "convert" me before. So after this comment I felt it doubly.


But now I am rambling. I think I'm trying to get this stuff out there... this feeling like the UU church was the only spritual community I have ever found where I felt accepted. And that's pretty much all of us-- so many UUers are rejects from other religions, folks who-- like myself-- had given up on organized religion and then felt strangely grateful when we found there was such a place as this, where you didn't have to even believe in God to feel accepted, and your version of God could be your own and changing. So I think it's very hurtful when someone comes in from that other, hateful world, and tears into the safe space we have created to feel accepted in an often-harsh, unaccepting world. He came in and violated our peace at its core.


And yet, he didn't. I don't feel like he has really accomplished anything. I know most of us will go back, even though I'm sure many people feel like I do-- like maybe we don't want to go back. I know we will press through this and bond together with the peace that is inside us. Peace is not a building, or even a single event or a collection of people... it is something dynamic that I know can be found again. Even though it feels irreprably lost now.

As for today, I just can't wait to get to work, where I can have a distraction from this, so that the scenes and thoughts don't keep playing themselves over and over in my mind. I cannot get quiet. It is the same thing over and over again. I hate that this is about the gay thing, too (which is now obvious); it makes it worse for me. I don't want to write about all that, though, because I am not angry or smart enough to have anything to say. I just feel depressed about the world, sometimes. And yet I feel the support of friends too. So what is left is just this noise through my brain, the way it takes away all sense of normalcy, the way ordering a bagel becomes complicated, this present reality not being real, or being invaded over and over again by the violent act that plays through my mind, and all the ramifications it may hold. I see people appearing carefree, focusing on all their attention on a conversation or a peice of bread, and I wish for my mind back, my attention, for my thoughts not to be held so captive and so restless in the cage of this event.

Now I am off to work, where I pray others' problems will at least temporarily distract me from my own. I wish badly to get outside of my head.


Thank you all for your support in this difficult time. And for your forgiving me of all the cliches this post likely contains... :)