A Word from Laura: In Grief and Solidarity
It didn’t take long for me to recall the Aroma Therapy Spa location on Piedmont Avenue, two blocks from the church I served in seminary, a few miles from the hospital where I was born, across from a bank where I worked as a summer teller. Tuesday’s shooter chose a southern point in a corridor of immigrant neighborhoods in northeast Atlanta, where the confluence of three interstates also happens to provide popular, easy access to strip clubs for well-heeled businessmen, visiting athletes, and local commuters.
While the perpetrator of this crime claims sex addiction, given his targeted location and identities of his victims, we cannot deny the realities of race, gender, ethnicity and class. As we grieve the victims and share outrage at the horror of this killing, we at Western stand, grieve, and pray with all whose shared identity means this violence resonates with painful personal experience.
One friend, a Korean-American pastor, shared how hard it was to get out of bed on Wednesday. She reminded me and those of us who don’t identify as black, indigenous, or people of color that we simply do not know how living in a body other than white can “chisel away bit by bit at your spirit.” This lack of knowledge, though, does not have to mean lack of solidarity.
However you identify, know that the Western church community joins in grief over violence and cries out against any injustice directed towards Asian-Americans and Pacific Islanders. We reject and stand up against any violence towards women. While we have no evidence the victims were sex workers, given the shooter’s expressed intent we recognize the physical and economic vulnerability of all who identify as such. We know that following Jesus, whose journey to the cross exposed the wrongness of all injustice, violence and oppression, means standing with those who experience his kind of pain, even if we don’t feel it personally. If we do feel it, chiseling away at our spirit, Jesus’s journey reminds us that we are not alone, that God in God’s own self knows the excruciating pain.
I invite you to at least one act of lamentation (crying out to God) or faithful solidarity this week. You may use the prayer by Rev. Samuel Son, find out more on the Asian Americans Advancing Justice website, or take advantage of the volumes of research on gun violence and women. And never underestimate the importance of short messages of love and concern for those who feel this most personally.
In a time of chiseled spirits, may we trust in the deep power of the Spirit, joining us together, Laura
Lament after the murder of 8 people, 6 Asian-American women by Samuel Son