About a quarter of the way through my hour and a half commute, from the rolling hills of the Shenandoah Valley to the traffic congested highways of Northern Virginia, I heard the news from Alexandria.
I was concerned, but no one on the radio mentioned fatalities. It sounded like a scare, something to be aware of but not to consume me for the day.
Then, when I got to work and checked my phone for the news, the story got worse.
A shooter “devastated” by Trump’s election took out his anger on a group of representatives enjoying a game of baseball. The gunman shot a representative in the hip. He was in critical condition.
But despite working less than 30 miles away from the city in which this atrocity had occurred, the day continued. My co-workers and I briefly talked about the incident, but we had work to get done, so we got to it. I did my job, left to go home, picked up some food, and drove home to my fiance and an anime.
But I didn’t stop thinking about this, and what it means for me as a person and us as a nation.
Through all the work tasks, wedding planning, meal prepping, and Handmaid’s Tale-watching, I reflected on guns and the sacred fragility of life and disgruntled citizens and national division and critical conditions.
I felt like I needed to make a defense, but I didn’t have one. I didn’t know if sharing my thoughts would be necessary, or if my silence would make me complicit with and approving of such an act of violence.
Basically, I dealt with a national crisis the way I imagine most people with anxiety do.
I figured I should try praying, but I could only think of one prayer to use throughout this day:
Lord, have mercy.
It’s an ancient, simple, and heavy prayer, one that cannot make sense of senselessness but can undergird us when the world’s chaos threatens to unseat us.
It’s a prayer to pray when anger manifests itself in violence, when we allow divisions to poison us, when we forget that every human being is made in the holy, divine image of God.
Lord, have mercy.
It’s a prayer to pray when we don’t know how to react out of shock and fear, when we use difficult times to push political agendas instead of offering comfort to those in pain, when we harden our hearts because it all seems like just too much (and sometimes, it really is).
Lord, have mercy.
It’s a prayer to pray when we go about our days as if nothing has changed because we don’t know what else to do, when the world keeps turning at the same time that it stops dead, when we wonder aloud what the hell we can do to end all of this suffering.
Lord, have mercy.
It’s a prayer to pray when we isolate ourselves, when we allow our own relationships to decay in the dark instead of bringing our grievances and pain to the light of healing and resurrection, when we do not take care of ourselves.
Lord, in all times and circumstances, please, just have mercy on all of us.
Sometimes, it’s all I know to ask.
Freaking Out and Geeking Out 