Dear Friends,
Here in Italy we are often behind or blissfully ignorant of the news cycle in the United States. However, this morning we checked the news and learned of the shooting and deaths of nearly one dozen people in the synagogue in Pittsburgh and the shootings of African-Americans in a grocery store in Kentucky.
I cannot find words to express my sadness, horror and shame. How can this happen in our country?
My church at home is my second home. We brought our children to worship there and sent them to school there. How can we look our children in the eyes and tell them the place where we go and pray for peace can be a violent place, a place of death?
The first non-natives to come to our country were religious refugees; states such as Maryland and Rhode Island were founded by religious refugees, those who were outcasts or unwelcome elsewhere. While most of our population may be Christian, we were not founded as a “Christian nation.”
Although we have often fallen woefully short of our ideals, until recently, an American ideal and founding principle, with the glaring exception of slavery, was to welcome all comers, all those seeking a better life, regardless of religion or country of origin or wealth. All four of my grandparents were poor and poorly educated, and they looked to this country to give them, and more importantly, their children, a better life.
How did we come to a time where we want to exclude those who are poor or of a different faith? How did we come to a time when we want to jail and harm those who disagree with us, when freedom of thought and speech were ideals we believed made us unique? How did we come to a place where, several times in the last year alone, people are murdered in their place of worship?
Again, how do we explain this to our children and grandchildren — that we live in such a place?
We are on the precipice of darkness and light. Choose light.
And pray for the victims and families of the synagogue shooting, the grocery store shooting in Kentucky, the shootings in African-American churches, and the targets of pipe bombs. Pray for our country and pray for peace. And, act for peace too.
