I'm not a person who prays. But I was raised in the church. When I prayed, I never thought I was talking to god. I always interpreted prayer as me trying to cultivate the godliness or holiness innate in me, the inner divinity present in all human beings. When I prayed, I was asking for god-like patience, seeking some version of the calmness and compassion Jesus embodies in biblical stories, longing for some holy-spiritesque omniscience. What I was never doing in prayer was looking for some heavenly force to solve my worldly problems for me. .
In the wake of every mass shooting, people from rank and file Americans to our elected leaders are quick to send "thoughts and prayers." But then nobody does anything. They act like they've put in their call to The Man Upstairs and thus done all they can do. But these are not heavenly problems. These massacres are happening here, on earth, in our country, almost every day. No holy spirit is coming to stop them. Smokey the Bear famously said "Only you can prevent forest fires." Only we can prevent mass shootings.
But we don't.
We're too traumatized. We're so traumatized, we become complacent, and then it happens again and the cycle repeats. There's shock and exasperation and calls for prayers and then nobody does anything. The trauma is omnipresent.
Like climate change, the problem seems too big to solve. It's easy to blame guns. It's easy to blame mental health issues, It's easy to blame neglectful parenting. It's easy to blame a lack of security at the school, theater, nightclub, university student union or concert venue. The Blame Game is a great way to sidestep the issue at hand. As long as it's someone else's fault, there's nothing I can do to fix it. If they aren't my fault, they aren't my responsibility. Oh well, better get on with my life and quietly pray these atrocities won't happen to me or my loved ones. It's hard to think of a position less Christ-like than shrugging your shoulders, pointing a finger and saying 'it ain't my fault."
The reality is these are complicated tragedies, with many root causes interwoven in the frayed fabric of our society. We need to cultivate the god-like omnipotence in ourselves to say 'enough is enough." We need to act in the here and now. We need to look at mental healthcare reform, we need to look at our parental tactics, we need to look at our relationship to guns. No plea to a higher power is going to take away these tragedies. Only we can prevent mass shootings.
