Dear Friends,

As I know some of you do, I wake up in the morning to the radio.  While it may not be the best way to greet the day, I am accustomed to hearing the latest news of the day and having it work its way into my growing consciousness. This morning, the voice that I first heard was of a woman speaking quietly but clearly. I was catching snippets of what she said as I was awakening. It became clear to me that she was reflecting on the shootings in the Washington Navy Yard. She went on to mention her visceral reaction to the children who had died in Newtown. And by the wisdom and weariness in her voice, I knew before she said anything more that she had all too much knowledge of the pain caused by such tragedies.

Which was the case. She went on to talk about the tragedy of losing her own daughter in the Aurora, Colorado shootings  a year ago. There was weariness in her voice, but wisdom and determination as well. For since her daughter’s death she, a gun owner herself, has been working tirelessly for legislation which would regulate gun and ammunition sales. She has become a witness for peace.

Even if these tragedies have not touched us personally, we may grow weary of hearing about these events. A kind of numbness can set in, or a sense of resignation that there is not much that can be done. But if we know weariness, then we also know wisdom – the wisdom of Jesus Christ. At the center of our life together is Christ’s wisdom and presence. We have the wisdom of watching his nonviolent responses to the evil he encountered. And we  have his presence in our midst, the most powerful sign that evil can never have the ultimate final word.

This Sunday, Julia McMahon, the Lead Organizer for the B-PEACE for Jorge Campaign, will be with us at our Sunday Forum to talk about ways in which our diocese is responding to gun violence in our own area. She will share with us some specific ways in which we can overcome any sense of weariness and numbness to engage our hearts and minds in addressing the reality of violence in our lives.  She will also share more information about the upcoming congregational resource day on September 28th at Roxbury Community College. The keynote speaker for that day is the Rev. Kathleen Adams-Shepherd, rector of Trinity Episcopal Church in Newtown, Connecticut, who will speak of how her parish responded to the horrific events in that town.

I encourage you to make the commitment to attend one or both of these events. And I pray that God will waken us when we grow weary, granting us wisdom, so that we will be witnesses of Christ’s peace in the world.

Faithfully,

Tom