A mantra we repeated in our many years of Salvation Army work was articulated often by our social worker, Barb Arnold: “No violence or threats of violence.” It’s a simple phrase in expectation that while we were together at The Salvation Army, violence would not be accepted. It reminded the young people in our care that even if we disagreed with each other or became angry, violence was not an appropriate response. We hoped the concept might extend beyond the walls of our building, transferred to homes, schools and neighborhoods as well.
Violent actions are not unique to today’s world, despite the headlines that suggest they are. In the 1960s, the assassinations of public figures colored my elementary years, as did the murder/suicide of a family from my school. In November 1978, the deaths of 918 people in Jonestown (Guyana) made international news, while a few months later, my New Jersey neighbor was killed by her husband. Soon, mass killings were labeled by the places they occurred: Columbine High School in Colorado, Pulse Nightclub in Orlando, West Nickel Mines in Pennsylvania, Sandy Hook Elementary School in Connecticut. Closer to home, our employee’s daughters was thrown down the stairs by her estranged husband, a child in our Sunday School was beaten to death by his mother, and a young man entered the safe haven of our Salvation Army center with his gun and took aim at an “enemy.”
Over time, the names of the towns fade, as we shove each subsequent attack into a category: church shootings, school shootings, grocery store shootings, workplace shootings. While I still recognize the names of victims from Columbine and Sandy Hook, not so from the Atlanta spas or King Soopers in Boulder. Nor do I remember the name of the woman murdered in a house within walking distance of my home a few months ago, nor of a woman shot to death in the local Bob Evans last week. Violence continues to cast its net around us, yet while I still shudder in its devastation, I feel like I’ve been vaccinated against its ability to shock. With the pandemic, racial unrest, and a haze of violence ever on the horizon, I’m weary, so weary.
John Pavlovich explains the emotional exhaustion I’m feeling. “I sense a corporate emotional weariness in kind people these days, the accumulated scar tissue created when you’ve absorbed more bad news, predatory behavior, and attacks on decency than your reserves can manage. Sustained cruelty will do that to the human soul.”
In recent days, I hesitate to open my newspaper. Perhaps if I don’t look, there won’t be any reports of mass murders or domestic violence today. Unfortunately, my attempt at magical thinking hasn’t worked, and the violence continues. I’ve been humming a Christmas carol written by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow in 1863, expressing his desolation as he listened to the bells of Christmas, with his wife burned to death, his son severely wounded in a Civil War battle, and his nation at war with itself. “And in despair I bowed my head: ‘There is no peace on earth,’ I said, ‘For hate is strong, and mocks the song of peace on earth, good will to men.’”
Quoting Pavlovich again, “. . . one day something snaps and we lose the ability to respond with the same urgency and resilience we once had.A low-grade hopelessness sets in, slowly replacing our activism with apathy and one day rendering us immobile: cruelty sickness.” At times, apathy seems a reasonable response, forgetting the names of the dead and accepting a certain measure of fear as the needed price to pay for life in America.
Yet Pavlovich urges us forward: What do we do? “We tether ourselves to one another. Now, more than ever, good and tired people need to cultivate community, to stay connected to our tribes of affinity, and to carry one another through the fatigue when it comes.” Like Longfellow, we must sing of what is, but also listen for a new song. Bill Withers expresses it best: “Lean on me, when you’re not strong . . . we all need somebody to lean on.” A new day dawns.
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