Faithful Philly Forum

As most know, there was a school shooting in Paradise, PA on Monday.  A man walked into a Amish one-room school house and shot ten girls, ages 6 to 13.  Five died and five have lived.

Most communities, when faced with violent, painful loss, react with a blend of pain, grief and immense anger.  In this situation, the tone set by the community of Amish to which the girl belonged to has been one of grace and love.  The surrounding population has picked up on it, and the response of has been gentle and deeply caring.  I am staggered by the amount of love that has poured forth as a result of this horror, and I am changed by it.

I’ve started thinking about what the world would be like if the families of the victims gathered with the families of the perpetrator(s) to grieve and pray every time a violent act such as this was committed.  It seems to me that that would be a revolutionary act.

If you have a moment for something thought provoking, check out Andrew Sullivan’s essay on religion and current politics. Very compelling stuff. He extends it on his own blog to be the base of his conservative political world view–basically that we need to protect ourselves from the hubris of certainty. God does play a wonderful trick on us when some of us (like me) are made certain of our own progressive vision of the reign of God–and then find ourselves nodding in solidarity with a conservative blogger. Perhaps the impulse to nod is teaching more about the reign of God than anything else. What Sullivan ultimately invites us to do is to risk open conversation about our faith–to not let the extremes of absolute belief and absolute non-belief hold control of the conversation about faith.