“All that is holding us together [is] stories and compassion.”
-Anne Lamott quoting Barry Lopez, Stitches, 23

This last month has been dark for a myriad of reasons. Holding on to hope sometimes feels like trying to hang tight to a fraying rope in a monsoon. Compassion—those moments that remind me that I am not alone—will always be the act that keeps me holding on. When I talk with my wife or get a phone call from a family member or a hug from someone I run into in town, it’s a needed reminder that this too shall pass.

The inverse is also true. When you are in a troubled time and you feel alone then it seems like you will be falling in the abyss forever. Which is tough because none of us can experience that reassuring compassion all the time. Loved ones can’t check on you constantly; they work, they have lives. Friends may not know what to say. Thank God, then, for stories which are the other thing that I have found to have held me together these last few weeks.

When I was a kid, Superman comics were a refuge for me. I didn’t really fit in at school. I had friends, but there was a pervasive sense of unbelonging. It’s that not too uncommon adolescent feeling that you don’t matter. Yet when I journeyed to Metropolis via my local comic book store, I was transported to a world where good always triumphed over evil. A place where the most powerful individual was also the most humble and kind. It was a world in which the every person and even a cat up a tree mattered. I wanted that world to be true. I still want that world to be true.

The flickering of lights in the upper room cast shadows all around. They were gathered for a meal, but a weight hung over the proceedings. The conversation did not crackle the same way. The laughter was nervous. This was unusual. Over three years, they had grown into a family; a bickering, loving, motley crew of a family bound by the amazing sights they had witnessed and their teacher. Yet they looked now at his face and felt in their bones that it was all coming to an end.

Then Jesus did something unusual, but to be honest, the unusual was actually fairly ordinary with him. He wrapped a towel around his waist and filled a basin with water. Then he knelt before each of them and washed their feet. Feet caked in dirt and mud mixed with cuts and sores. Feet that had followed him all over the Palestinian countryside. It was servant’s work, not something fit for a rabbi, much less a messiah or God’s own son.

Yet there he was kneeling before each of his students; including the one who he knew would walk out the door in a moment to betray him. He washed their feet clean and told them that was what they were to do. He was not a teacher who simply told them to serve one another from high upon a hill. He knelt down and showed them what it meant to serve and love one another, even those considered enemies. And he told them, he told us, that love was the true mark of being his follower.

God, it feels like a sick cycle. It touches every corner of the country. It shatters a new community every time and re-wounds the places where it happens before. An unspeakable act of violence that we have grown far too accustomed speaking about. A place of learning mutated into a battlefield. Children and the adults who have chosen to teach them, clean up after them, and care for them are killed.

The response is an unholy echo. “How could this happen?” “Thoughts and prayers.” “Don’t politicize a tragedy.” “Something must be done.” But there never seems to be enough willingness to do that something. Then slowly or maybe all-too-quickly, people begin to move on. Except the shattered communities that cannot and the families of people like Evelyn, Hallie, William, Cynthia, Mike, and Katherine. The rest of us forget until we are brutally reminded again.

God, help us not forget. Be with the families of the lost and wounded. Be with Covenant and the larger Nashville community. Be with Columbine, Newtown, Uvalde, Parkland, Columbine, and the scores of other towns whose hearts break with every new tragedy. Be with the children and teenagers in schools who see this pattern and for whom the inaction makes them feel like acceptable sacrifices.

This is half of a story. The other half is about heartbreak and this is not the place for that tale. This is a story about hope.

While I was on my sabbatical, I prayed frequently for clarity and direction. I would eventually learn that you better make darn sure that’s what you really want before you pray for something like that, but I was in the naive bubble of rest and renewal.

As some of you might know, I spent the last weekend of my sabbatical on a silent retreat at the Abbey of Gethsemani in Kentucky. It was amazing; a weekend that nourished and focused my soul. It was an introvert’s paradise that allowed me to read, write, hike, go to prayer services with monks, and not have to talk to anybody.

Often I would find myself staring at an evergreen tree outside the window of my room. Throughout the weekend, that tree would sway in the breeze. It was so quiet and peaceful and I would become transfixed by the gentle motion. For the first few days, I would not even think about it. I just rooted myself in my chair and watched the invisible push and pull the branches.