May 27, 2022 |
Rector's Blog: Bury The Rag Deep
| The Rev. Philip DeVaul
Rector's Blog: Bury The Rag Deep
This blog is about Buffalo, New York. This blog is about Uvalde, Texas.
Each event on its own is catastrophically tragic. Taken together, along with the countless mass shootings about which we’ve already forgotten, we can no longer call them unthinkable. They are not unthinkable, inconceivable, or unexplainable. They are every day. They are a part of us. When we bury the rag deep in our face, it is not for one isolated incident, however awful it may be. The tears we shed are a collection of years of sorrow and rage brought on by our complete unwillingness to be transformed. We want these shootings to stop. We want to change nothing about our lives, our culture, our laws in order to make them stop. We throw up our hands. What can be done? This is who we are.
There is a tendency for us to treat Jesus’ crucifixion as if it is uniquely gruesome. But the stripping and beating and hanging of Jesus is no more gruesome than the endless AR-15 slaughter of innocents that makes up the fabric of modern American life. How is Golgotha worse than Uvalde? How is Calvary different from Buffalo?
