This week's Maine victims--ordinary working folks out for an evening.
This week the worst mass shooting of 2023 scarred Lewiston, Main leaving at latest count 18 dead, many more wounded and a community shattered. Last night the body of the killer was finally found after nearly three days of searching and two days of an area-wide shelter in place order. This time the shooter, a 40 year old Army Reservist armed with an assault weapon, had a documented history of mental illness and recent hospitalization after threatening to shoot up his Army Base. Under Maine’s loose gun laws, he was allowed to retain his firearms. That may or may not change now. Unlike other recent mass murders there doesn’t appear to be a hate crime motive. His targets were ordinary working people, all white, just out for a good time at a good night out at a neighborhood bowling alley and a bar and grill. Whatever rage and madness drove the shooter, his victims were just as dead.
A memorial to the victims of the Tree of Life Synagogue mass murder five years ago this week in Pittsburgh.
This week also marked the fifth anniversary of the mass murder at the Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh on October 27, 2018. I was asked to do the Chalice Lighting at the Tree of Life Unitarian Universalist Congregation in McHenry the next day. The topic for the morning was sanctuary. I threw away what I had carefully prepared. I was planning on reading this new poem instead which was totally inadequate to the situation but due to a scheduling mix up, I didn’t read it that day. Instead, I read it for the first time a year later at the Tree of Life Coffee House at the church. The poem also referenced other ugly, hateful episodes the same week.
Sanctuary in a Very Bad Week
Headlines:
Trump Attempts to Erase Transgender Identity
Two Blacks Killed at Walmart by Angry Racist
14 Bombs Sent to Targets Denounced by Trump
11 Dead at Tree of Life Synagogue Mass Murder
Sacred shelter—A haven offered or sought,
a holy obligation and a desperate resort.
The Church once offered it to those fleeing
the wrath of a king or war lord.
Today we are called to offer it to
immigrants and refugees,
the homeless and unwanted,
the despised of color, gender, faith,
abused women and families,
all the wretched.
Know this—Sanctuary can fail.
Ask Thomas Becket, Ann Frank,
the four little Girls of Birmingham,
the frozen bum,
the murdered wife,
the deported asylum seeker,
the immigrant children in cages,
the dead Jews of Tree of Life.
But failure does not cancel hope or duty.
time to step up,
to take our chances,
to become a People of Sanctuary.
—Patrick Murfin
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