Bad Friday

(Not Good Friday)

Outside my window this morning I notice a freshly raised billboard peeking at me as if to taunt: “NRA Expo, 14 Acres of Guns & Gear,” it advertises, “April 17-19.” I laugh at the irony that this is during the weeks of Easter still. It is not the guns or the image of almost endless tables of arsenals that I picture in my mind, but our nation’s fascination with them as if somehow they were the means to freedom and safety. As if the metal that is held in one’s hand, originally made from launching sparkly rockets in the sky, really gave anyone an ounce of security. It is not the hunter’s gun that I think about, but the one who uses it as an easy solution.

Somehow within most people’s minds, there is still the idea that we would benefit from a horrible act of cruelty, an act of violence toward another. It was perhaps the day when we saw another of our own species as a threat to our survival. In many ways, I can wonder about a world in which resources were scarce and survival was harsh. But not in our time, especially when I fly over a state like Texas and we are but ants and there is land and trees and what looks like an endless world. It is hard to fathom.

But what if in a world where there was disease and cruelty, there was hardship and no medical care, and a person sought to bring life, healing, and hope into a place bereft of it? It would seem like that person would be celebrated, the desert flower would be respected, honored, and loved, for all time. But this was not the whole story. These acts of kindness were being born in every human being. Holy births every single day, across our borders and in distant lands. But these healers threaten our inner wounds, the tenderest parts inside.

Do we not know that each person who is killed has the potential of bringing so much good and healing into the world, to relieve so much suffering and pain, yet bombs are dropped on children, women, and men indiscriminately? The next person who would cure cancer, or the next one who would solve an energy crisis, or even the one who loved another so much that it would mend their heart.

The other day, I read acronyms that should not exist, but yet by some horror, they do — WCNSF, Wounded Child No Surviving Family, and it tore my heart apart. Somehow the intent to kill and maim children can be justified, if it was directed for the destruction of a place like Gaza because their ideas were somehow foreign from us. But these are the letters of modern crucifixions, a sign at God’s feet, still a mockery of a deity on a cross, attempting to stomp out whatever goodness emerged from this world.

INRI was what the Romans inscribed in jest: “Jesus the Nazarene, King of the Jews,” but he did not want to be king any more than he wanted to start another religion, only a teacher of sorts. There were no territories to be seized nor people to conquer, only hearts to mend and people to heal. And yet, he was still a threat, something that stirred the status quo, as if he was taking away something else we held dear, the illusion of our fragile selves, the clear sign of who we truly are.

Photo by Mohammed Ibrahim on Unsplash