Scary Prospect

Last August, a gunman opened fire in a Unitarian Universalist church, upset because we are "too liberal". Last week, a doctor who provided abortion services was murdered as he ushered at the Sunday morning service. And then, a white supremacist opened fire at the Holocaust Memorial in Washington, DC. Gun sales are up. Ammunition sales are so brisk that there are shortages in some places. The Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) reports a major increase in hate group websites. It's a scary prospect.

While I was checking the SPLC's website, I looked at the hate-group map of New Hampshire. We're not doing as bad as some other states, or maybe, our haters are more independent... there's a white supremacy group listed in Concord that has its Post Office address in Haverhill and an anti-semitic "traditional" Catholic group in Richmond. But we all know independent-minded folks with guns in the closet and emergency rations in the cellar, people who will talk about "the rising" that will result if the liberals push too far.

So what's a peace-loving liberal-minded religious person to do?

I guess I'm remembering that peacemaking does not wait for war to begin.

We need to talk with the folks we know, the ones with the apocalyptic mindset, and listen to them, too. What is it they fear? Is there common ground? Something to work on together? These conversations are not easy. Not easy to set up and not easy to pursue once they start. But each of us knows someone who needs to calm down about what's happening in our country just now. The TV news they see, the radio talk shows they prefer, and the websites they visit will not help them calm down. Only their real live neighbors, co-workers, and relatives can reach out with the calming effect of listening and caring.

What the shooters in Knoxville, Wichita, and Washington have in common is something that draws them out of the network of grumbling, fact-distorting, right-wing opinion they inhabit day to day into a supremely solitary action, a sense that the mantle of responsibility has fallen on their shoulders, that they must act rather than continue to complain.

There is no way to tell how many degrees of separation there are between us in our liberal cocoons and them in their right-wing ones, but to have any hope at all of reaching the next potential shooter before he (or she) shoots, we have to move toward them with courage, love, patience, and hope. How can we do that?