The Least Among Us Shine a Light

I got this note from Mazy....

"A friend shared a story I love about our mutual friend and mentor Rev. William Sloane Coffin, Jr. some years ago. It was Christmas Eve and the pews at New York City’s Riverside Church were packed. The Christmas pageant was underway and had come to the point at which the innkeeper was to turn away Mary and Joseph with the resounding line, “There’s no room at the inn!”

Never mind that no figure of the innkeeper actually appears in scripture. We’ve all imagined him delivering the message of “no room” to the baby Jesus’s parents. And it seemed the perfect part for Tim, an earnest youth of the congregation who had Down Syndrome. Only one line to remember: “There’s no room at the inn!” He had practiced it again and again with his parents and with the pageant director. He seemed to have mastered it.

So Tim stood at the altar, bathrobe costume firmly belted over his broad stomach, as Mary and Joseph made their way down the center aisle. They approached him, said their lines as rehearsed and waited for his reply. Tim’s parents, the pageant director, and the whole congregation almost leaned forward as if willing Tim to remember his line.

“There’s no room at the inn!” Tim boomed out, just as rehearsed. But then, as Mary and Joseph turned on cue to travel further, Tim suddenly yelled, “Wait!” They turned back startled, along with the congregation, and looked at Tim in surprise.

“You can stay at my house!” he called.

I am told William Coffin strode to the pulpit, said, “Amen,” and sat down. It was the best sermon he never preached."

A Nation of Minions and Monsters

Last month another gunman slaughtered twenty-six people in a church in Sutherland Springs, Texas. I woke that morning to the awful news and all morning while I took care of my 13 month old granddaughter I day dreamed...of the grandparents whose grandchildren are never coming home again. No dream. This was true, gut wrenching true. So I dreamed on...how awful is the president of the NRA, how does he sleep at night, would I throw him in a cage if I could, would silencing him let children live?

And then I came to my senses. One person isn't that powerful, not in our cradle of democracy. One person does not have "one ring to rule them all...and in the darkness bind them." This is not Russia, China, or Saudi Arabia, much less Tolkien's Middle Earth. We are not a people of minions led by a Monster. Lately I feel as though we are being led by a minion. But my biggest disappointment is not the leader of our nation or the leader of the NRA or the white supremacist groups that are rearing their shaven heads. 

My biggest disappointment is the silent majority who have not yet lost a child or grandchild or sister or mother or dear friend to a leaden volley, who continue to elect legislators who will not pass serious gun laws. There are some who have lost family to gun violence and who still love the second amendment, and I respect them. I think they are nuts, but I respect their right to be nuts. But 75% of Americans do not own guns, and I am skeptical that even a quarter of these non-gun owners put a high premium on the right to bear automatic weapons. Yet there is no outcry against these weapons. Who is mad? The demented soul who fired the gun or the silent masses who have no problem selling him the gun?

No, silencing the head of the NRA, whoever the hell he is, will not cure the madness that afflicts us. We are a monstrous people, we are a land of monsters. We enslaved Africans, robbed Native Americans, imprisoned Asians, murdered countless people of color, worked factory folks to the bone until unions took hold, all in the name of supremacy, privilege (white of course), capitalism, survival of the fittest. And now we prefer to honor an archaic amendment rather than create an environment in which our children can grow up safely. We call the gunslingers insane, but we are the monsters.