Most of what I write about here is abstracted. I try to make the concepts concrete enough that we don’t need examples. I have varying degrees of success, according to my readers feedback, and I appreciate that. This isn’t an easy thing to attempt.
This article will be different.
Rather than taking a significant amount of space trying to make something abstract concrete, I anticipate this to be shorter and plainer (and more personal).
The assassination of Charlie Kirk has been a lightning rod of an event (at least in the United States), if nothing else. For someone who has never listened to a complete recording of his, I found myself mourning much more than expected. I count myself sensitive to the pervasiveness of both good and evil in the world, subject to overwhelm on account of both, and found this event to wash me over with a sense of deep sadness.
I want to sit with that for a moment. I am trying to take the advice of my dear friend and fellow artist Tony Yazbeck to, “feel all your feelings.” We’re working on it.
One way I have tried is to look for resonance in community. I’ve asked myself, “Where might there be other people who just want to sit with there sadness?” I check my social media feeds, and check in with some of my friends. The conversations I’ve had with friends have been helpful. My social media feeds, less so…much less so.
I have always thought of social media as more media than social, so I shouldn’t be surprised, but this has been different. I could hardly find a single post that created a space of reflection, offered time to feel, or anything other than a direct straightforward interpretation of the event – natural skewed to a particular perspective.
Many took to the airwaves to guide their audience in how they should feel. I even heard broadcasters on news-based podcasts bring on guests to discuss what “someone’s appropriate response” to the event should be.
Are we really in a place where the adult population of the nation requires that kind of guidance? And if we are, is the best thing to continue to spoon feed behavioral prescriptions? What happens if I don’t hit the prescribed mark? Do I fail somehow as a human being?
I just want to be sad. At least for a moment. Is that too much to ask?
Without a space of resonance to be a part of, I resolved to allow myself the time and space to be sad on my own. I’m not even looking for comfort. I trust that will come in due time. I have some experience with grieving.
Right now, I know what I don’t want. I don’t want to be smart, or right, or angry. I don’t want to process, or figure it out, or take up a banner, or never forget. I don’t want to think about all the good, or remember, or keep going. I don’t want to give attention to any other voice pulling in one direction or the other.
I want a pause. I want time. I want space. I want what is necessary, and good, and frankly beautiful. To honor the real emotions that are coming up, to sit with them and inquire about them, and to have their company. I had literally no connection to Charlie Kirk other than the random clips that would find there way to my social media feeds. The feelings that are coming up are a response to something much deeper, and warrant attention.
There is plenty of responsibility to attend to. There is plenty of effect to anticipate and navigate. But maybe one way to stabilize the ever-changing landscape that is reality is to hold the line of our person, giving ourselves the time and space necessary to work out our thoughts and feelings, before anyone else tells us what we should be thinking and feeling.
Andrew Nemr, hello:
I am just seeing your powerful Notes. I would have definitely dropped this link on the countless posts following the senseless killing of Kirk. People could benefit, emotionally; perhaps even physiologically. Could this tragedy simply be a severe case of one individual denying The First Amendment rights of another human being. Charlie Kirk was silenced. We should be sad based on this alone. Oh..."Good afternoon. I'm hear to speak to you about ..and you may or may not agree.' Then here come the rifles. Are we desensitized? Absolutely. The truth is America is to blame. We're a nation built on violence, imperialism, genocide, free labor, etc. It's a long list.
I thought about Erika Kirk, and her innocent children, Kirk's children - who are now without a father. They join the dozens of American children who were raised by their mothers, because their fathers served the country in one way or another. Husbands, fathers, brothers and sons, gone too soon. The idea that it's business as usual, is sad. It's like the saying, if a tree falls and no one is there, does it make a sound... I'm paraphrasing, but if none sheds a tear, publicly, it's misleading.
I think we are sad...and sadly, we are just overwhelmed and would rather say," I'll think about it tomorrow."
This definitely resonates with me, Andrew. The day of Charlie Kirk’s assassination, I had never even heard his name. By that evening, I was grieving. For the following week or so, I stayed up far too late each evening: reading, watching, listening, absorbing, and processing, volumes about this man, his family, his work, his followers, his haters, his legacy, and his mistakes. I needed to sit in the sadness a while too. I needed to experience it, before coming to any sort of clear thought behind the emotions I was feeling, and what perhaps they could mean for my life or the lives of those around me.
Because movements of this level of emotion always mean something, always. The Book of Lamentations 3:26 says, “It is good to wait quietly for the salvation of the Lord.” It is good and beautiful to wait. It is good and beautiful to be quiet in the sadness and wait. And it is only good and beautiful to be quiet in the sadness and wait - BECAUSE the light will follow. And it’s this “knowing,” that the light will indeed follow, that is hard earned in life. It is only earned by personally enduring sadness and darkness and then experiencing the transformation of dawn. But you can’t rush it, you can’t run from it, and you can’t fake it, which you personified so beautifully in the Dark Night.
The priest who gave the Sunday homily after the recent Catholic School shooting in Minneapolis, Father Zehren, spoke well about this to the congregation. “There is no darkness that God can’t bring light from. There’s no sorrow that God can’t spring joy from. There’s no grieving that Jesus can’t bring comfort to. And there’s no dying that Jesus can’t raise to new life. When we hear that voice of Jesus, it comes to our hearts and a little light starts to dawn. That’s what we wait for now. That’s what we welcome. We welcome the dawn of a new day at Annunciation. We welcome the light of a new day. It’s a light that will scatter every darkness; it’s a light that will never fade. It’s a light not just for us; it’s the light of the world, and it’s the light of Jesus Christ. We watch for that light.”
So we wait, in the sadness and grief over so many miseries in our families and neighborhoods and country and around the world, we wait. But we wait with a heart watching for the light. And, for you, wait also with your feet, those feet that are tap dancing along with the beautiful rhythm of your sensitive heart 🩵 - because you are truly bringing light to the people around you.