Minister’s Column

I didn’t want to spend my Valentine’s Day like this, reaching out to friends in Lansing and to college students here to see if they are OK; listening to the news for more details on the deadly shooting. It is Valentine’s Day, and so far this calendar year there have been 68 mass shootings in the United States of America. The number of guns per capita in the U.S. – 120 guns for every 100 citizens – is more than double that of Yemen, the country second on the list. I learned that from watching the news reports. I also watched the police chief give his briefing, the governor at this side; from the same podium I watched the doctor break down in tears trying to describe the all-night efforts of surgeons to save the lives of college students whose bodies were pierced by bullets.
 
My first contacts reaching out today were to the college students in our UUFCM community. The victims in East Lansing are their peers. The mass shootings in public places, as we all know, include K-12 schools as well as colleges and universities. We all feel vulnerable in this society awash with guns and gun violence, and students have a special vulnerability. My first contact that I received today was from a UU minister from another state, a lament for the violence and a prayer of solidarity to the UU ministers of Michigan as we cope with the aftermath.
 
Unitarian Universalists can and do work for legislation to curb gun violence. We must continue to do this work. And our congregations are communities dedicated explicitly to love and compassion and healing. We especially must continue to do this work. It is the work of welcoming the stranger; the work of connecting with the people we spend Sunday mornings with at other times during the week. Our work is the life-saving, world-changing work of creating a loving community within our walls, connecting that community with Unitarian Universalists everywhere, and extending love, compassion, equity and justice beyond our walls. On this day we extend love and compassion to our neighbors and families, and especially to that branch of our human family at Michigan State. We must do whatever we can, through political action, through prayer, and through human compassion to heal from this tragedy and to prevent the next one.
 
PRAYER:
Abiding Spirit of Love, may your presence be felt by the people of East Lansing. May the students, faculty and staff of Michigan State University feel that they are not alone. May our human prayers and compassion reach to that community, devastated by violence; may the more-than-human power of love, of goodness in the universe, of comfort from Mother Earth, reach them also.
 
May peace prevail. May we have the strength and courage to make it so.
 
Amen.
 
Rev. Andrew (Drew) Frantz