Conversations about Aurora Theater Tragedy

7/21/2012

Carrie Doehring and Larry Graham invite you to share the ways you are caring for yourselves and others in the aftermath of the tragic violence in Aurora. Where do you find hope? What form does lamentation take? How do you engage in interrogation of this kind of senseless violence?

23 Comments

Cathie

7/22/2012 01:50:22 am

After getting quickly into motion on Friday to help get resources, like Carrie and Larry's work, out to others, I flew back to Denver. And then spent Saturday in denial -- not connecting, not wanting to think about what has happened or about what is needed now or what might happen next.
Are we on the Front Range getting used to this level of violence?
How does one re-engage?
Is it a moral failure to want to check out of dealing?
How do others think about this, and what thoughts can Carrie or Larry share?

Mark

7/22/2012 02:19:51 pm

Cathie, I think that a roller coaster of emotions, feelings, compassion, anger, and helplessness are all components of tragic and tragedy. Wanting to check out is not nothing to be ashamed of, almost giving up is not failure; it is the self reminding us that we are indeed frail, and human. I personally believe it is a reminder, that because of those frailties we need something outside of ourselves, a source, and power to stand when we don't want to, or see the hope in it.

For me as a person who has experiences a gammit of highs and lows, that rollercoaste that I mentioned above helps to reconnect with the holy in oh so unholy moments. Re-engaging is not my first reaction but it is my final destination. Prayer and meditation helps in that process.

It is important to me that you talk about the Front range or(Front Line) as a former soldier I bring a lot of that to my ministry, and yes I do believe that I have that on my mind a front line mentality. Therefore not much surprises me, there are somethings I expect to happen on the front line.

Carrie Doehring

7/22/2012 08:34:17 am

Cathie: I appreciate your post. I find that I get engaged emotionally and spiritually with the unfolding tragedy when I can do something to help. When there's nothing left to do I tend to feel disengaged. It's easy for me to feel guilty about being disengaged, as though I've forgotten the horror that victims, families, and others are experiencing.
It helped me to go to church today and be immersed in the liturgy and music. When I'm in that communal space I'm more able to simply receive the feelings and thoughts that come to me. It's hard for me to stay in that receptive mode when I'm doing my own thing, and also when I'm not actively helping.
What I would say in response to your questions is this: compassion, including self compassion, is really important in a time like this. No matter how I'm reacting I try not to judge myself. I try to be compassionate towards myself with whatever ways I'm coping. Then I try to see whether there are ways to cope that work better for me, in the sense that they help me feel connected and not alone.
Thanks again for posting, Cathie.
Carrie

Melinda

7/22/2012 11:16:32 pm

It helped me to be able to preach this Sunday, (as opposed to just swear) to respond in sacred ways in a sacred Spacious community (the San Luis Valley) that shares, not just values, but heartaches, vulnerabilities, and joys, every week.
Our gospel reading this Sunday was Mark 6:30-34, where Jesus and the 12 dubious disciples have decided to disengage, and get away from it all. They take a boat, and sail across a small sea to the Other Side, to try to escape the seething teeming endless sea of Need that engulfs them every where Jesus takes them. The motley crowd gets wind of their direction, and meets them there on the other side! (so much for being able to escape it all for awhile...!)
I take comfort in that little vignette, that the Master of the tumultuous sea of humanity needed a break from it all. And i take comfort in his Grace, that when they arrived, Jesus did not need to or choose to turn away, or respond with exasperation, or frustration, or guilt. He found the Deep inside himself, and was moved with compassion. I take comfort in the Grace that is with us, so that we, too, can re-engage in therapeutic and instructive, constructive ways, when we re-enter, and reach the shoreline again. A wise tongue brings healing (Proverbs 12). A listening discerning soul is a rare treasure. The deepest Souls, like deep waters, are fed by many streams and underground springs, and have many currents. Responding directly to wave after wave of tragedy and evil is only one part of our Sea-faring Task. Trimming the sails, securing the oars, telling each other hilarious fish stories, and enjoying the sunlight dancing on the water, is another.

Larry

7/23/2012 01:18:27 am

Thank you, Carrie, for taking the time to post this Blog. It will serve us well, even beyond this crisis. I have found it helpful to follow the news from New York, but also to turn it off when it turns to speculative and redundant journalism. Setting limits on my exposure to the media is very important for my self care. Being in conversations by email, Moodle Forums in the death and dying course, and reading and posting some thoughtful resources has been important. And of course, prayer, meditation and mindfulness practice have been essential. I have posted some links in the Resources for this Blog that you might find helpful.

Warm regards!

Larry

Mary

7/23/2012 04:25:18 am

I also took a break from the non-stop broadcast of reports from the Aurora tragedy and found comfort in church - the message, a report from the youth trip to East Los Angeles with the theme "Love is Greater Than Fear," and as always, the music. Paul Kottke's reminding us that in the midst of it all, good and bad, we have community. We're strengthened in our faith through community. It's not political - liberal or conservative - we're a very diverse family, ready to support each other.

Annie Groves

7/24/2012 12:21:30 am

Denver Post sub-head today "Victim's Kin Attends (Hearing) for Sake of Justice." Justice is obviously a key component, in this horrific tragedy, and I am curious about the concept of justice. I need to ponder more, but thought I would ask if anyone can help me better understand the ramifications (pros and cons) of justice in spiritual care? Thank you Carrie and Larry for creating this blog.

Larry Graham

7/24/2012 12:47:59 am

Annie: Good core point; the issue of justice is central in pastoral care, beginning with a need to think that what happens to us is just or fair or deserved and that God didn't cause unjust things to happen. the field has also taken a turn to relational justice as a central category for care. This turn has arisen from the prevalence of sexual and domestic violence and other gun violence in our culture. My book on Care of Persons, Care of Worlds, Carrie's on Taking Care, and Nancy Ramsay's great overview of this approach to the field in Pastoral Theology: Redefining the Paradigms will help you sort this out. Here is a link to my Bib on which you will find all this:

Graham Bibliography in Pastoral Theology and Care 2012
http://www.google.com/url?q=https%3A%2F%2Fdocs.google.com%2Fdocument%2Fd%2F14PA6zfS3Gu7Iz0tFq7S271z_VGOIthg-GxhtXdwW_E0%2Fedit

Larry Graham

7/24/2012 12:48:43 am

Carrie Doehring

7/24/2012 12:51:33 am

Annie:
What a thoughtful question. I'll attempt a response, hoping that others will add their thoughts.
Justice has many dimensions. One dimension to socially just spiritual care is self reflexivity: monitoring how our values, social advantages and social disadvantages lead us to interpret tragic events in ways that may make sense to us but may not do justice to the full complexity of tragedy. Related to this is our tendency to interpret the stories of others through our own life experiences, leading us to impose our values and prejudices on others.
Another dimension of socially justice care is to link personal and familial justice with social justice, aligning care of persons with care of the world. We have a responsibility to align our personal theologies with public theologies. For example, I can't say that God protected me from harm by preventing me form going to this movie because it was sold out. This personal theology doesn't make sense when I think of why God didn't irevent everyone from going to the movie.
In terms of the tragic events in Aurora, there is so much we don't know yet, and which we won't know for a long time about why this happened, that it is premature to try and make sense of these events. Given the need for much of the evidence to remain undisclosed because of criminal justice requirements, we won't know for a long time how to address the complex reasons for this crime.
Several aspects of this tragedy make it more likely that there will eventually be a just outcome: first, the perpetrator was apprehended, meaning that our society's legal procedures for seeking justice can be implemented. Second, there appear to be no outstanding moral issues of neglect or incompetence on the part of first responders. The opposite seems to e the case: first responders, survivors and everyone on the scene acted extraordinarily well to save as many people as possible. To my way of thinking, the web of life that connects us to each others, and in my theology, to a compassionate caring God, worked as well as it possibly could to sustain life.
Carrie

Melinda

7/24/2012 03:32:12 am

The necessity for aligning personal theology with public theology as an aspect of justice, as Carrie so wisely points out in her post, is closely related to the need to align private experiences with public and community experiences, and to linking personal understandings with a broader range of perspectives. Justice is thus a Sister to Truth. Without truth telling, there can be no justice.

In that vein, I wanted to comment further in reflection on the piece posted by David Eagleman about James Holmes' brain.
I was dismayed by what i perceived as the simplistic way he attempted to treat the complex dynamics at work in the brain in general, and in Mr. Holmes' brain in particular. To come across as being an expert on neurobiology and psychological disorders and present such a simplistic and misleading mixture of opinion, speculation and pseudo-facts in his blog was very disappointing. Complexity is the nature of reality, and to simplify any of these matters, or the human brain for that matter, is to do an injustice to all of us, not just to Mr. Holmes and his parents/family.
The Eagleman article went on to "explain" psychosis as if it were not ever a transient state of mind, but rather a permanent and constant "disconnect from reality". He went on to "explain" psychopaths as lacking empathy and guilt, and cited Jeffrey Dahmer and Ted Bundy as examples of this, and wrote that psychopaths "commit their acts simply because of a lack of compunction and remorse".
excuse me????????????
Not only is NOTHING simple about the behavior of people who are labeled psychopathic, Dahmer and Bundy were NOT, then, psychopaths by this ridiculous definition. Anyone who has listened to the interviews with those two men, or their families, or their chaplains, would know that both men expressed having experienced guilt, remorse, and a desire to not feel compelled to engage in those kinds of predatory and sickening behaviors.
The brain is an organ that is in CONSTANT FLUX.
WE have, over the course of an afternoon, many "brain states". And how many among us is fully connected to reality?? Who has ever seen, much less can explain, gravity? or what a photon or a Higgs boson is? or how big the universe is? Or how the amygdala really works to disrupt or influence connections with the brain's frontal lobe? or why we said what we said, or did what we did, last night in the heat of passion?
At this point, to offer a single cause or simple explanation for who James Holmes is, or what he is capable of, or what his state of mind or states of brain were at the time of the murders, or in the months leading up to them as he rigged his apartment and ate breakfast and learned to shoot a gun, is irresponsible and is an injustice to all of us.
I am sobered to think that "what lies behind us, now, and what lies before us, is nothing compared to what lies within us....

Melinda

Shawn

7/24/2012 08:29:31 am

The Aurora memorial service was moving during many moments: when the families walked to their seats and everybody stood and clapped, when strangers hugged one another, when the names of the victims were read, followed by the entire crowd chanting “we will remember,” and when dragonflies flew lightly over our heads. At the very end, a Rabbi’s prayer to a compassionate God was a liberating moment. Reflected on the building’s windows, clouds were finding one form after another.
And there were moments when I felt jarred. Especially when a pastor spoke of how two members of his congregation were “third row center in the theater and got out unharmed by the grace of God.” I don’t know if that’s true, but what does it say to the families about their loved ones, now dead or wounded? I wondered what the families were feeling. What would be profoundly helpful to them? Another religious leader said, “Let’s thank God He didn’t make it rain tonight.” I wanted to shout: “No! God doesn’t cause it to rain...What are you saying?!?” Someone said “now is a time of healing.” How can that be when nobody has mentioned God and anger or responsibility and power and justice? What is the most useful pastoral response to a tragedy? To a mother sobbing through her hands, Don’t, don’t take him?
I am not at ease in the world. There is definitely some wisdom in learning to see our moments of need, and recognition, and tragedy not as disparate experiences but as facets of a single experience that is called a life. I have a long way to go.
A pastor asked “What kind of people are we becoming?” I wonder that, too. Perhaps another question is what kind of society have we become? We have a long way to go in acknowledging grief and moral accountability and as Larry would say “interrogating causes in a public way.” Some may never get a break from grief, nor be able to turn it off. Ever. Maybe that is what it means to be conscious of loss.
With an open expectancy, I came to the memorial with my daughters and their friend. During it I had many questions. I was curious about how these public memorials get put together and planned. Who decides on the speakers? Shouldn’t public memorials represent many beliefs? Whom are memorials for? What does “religious feeling” mean? But what I remember of that Sunday evening is less the talk itself than the being together afterward, less the specifics of the conversations about God than the moments of sacred attentiveness those conversations led to: gruff strangers hugging, lighting candles, brief faces in the crowd, white blooms on the milkweed, an old woman mumbling to a Virgin Mary propped up against a fence.
There are a lot of things about God that baffle me. I don’t know if I am wrong to believe that suffering is at the very center of our existence. Or what positive divine providence even means. Sometimes I don’t know who to ask what’s happening or will it be all right? But I do know that my mistake lay in thinking grief is radically different than love. To come to this realization is not to be suddenly at ease in the world. I don’t think it’s possible for humans to be conscious and comfortable at the same time. Though we may be moved by feelings of beauty, and love’s abundance might make us dream of a life that endures, these thoughts and feelings come to us only in passing. And that’s why the psalmist cried, “A broken heart you will not despise,” why in the hymns sung on that memorial-evening, the singer sometimes ran out of words and her throat cracked, crying sorry. What else is there, but sorry--sorry that our loving doesn’t change the world enough.

Carrie Doehring

7/24/2012 08:49:11 am

Watching the vigil, I was jarred at those moments you describe, Shawn (like references to personal meanings that God's grace protected some survivors, without any awareness of the public theological implications of this personal belief).
It seemed to me that Governor Hickenlooper and the rabbi who prayed opened up some sort of space for interrogation and also anger, while others did not.
I also found the references to healing premature and in their reiteration, jarring. I wanted to hear more about glimmers of hope in the darkness. Does this urgency for healing reflect an embedded redemptive theology that predominates in times like this?
Yet more questions arose from the continual references to family ties. Will those whose family ties are inevitably threatened by horrific loss feel as though there is something wrong with them?
In the end, I was most aware of the limitations of our public theologies as Americans. I felt our joint responsibility to construct theologies that are more able to hold the complexity and depth of suffering. I sensed these kinds of theologies behind our governor's words and also the Rabbi's prayer.
How can we go about publicly raising these kinds of theological questions without undermining the good efforts of leaders to courageously lead vigil services?
Carrie

Shawn

7/24/2012 10:52:25 am

Hello Carrie:

I had the same feeling, too.

I love your question: "Will those whose family ties are inevitably threatened by horrific loss feel as though there is something wrong with them?"

You are really good with putting into theological language what I feel intuitively, but don't have the tools to name, yet.

We (whoever wants to) could work on writing a kind letter in this forum. What do you think?

Shawn

Shawn

7/24/2012 10:52:46 am

Shawn

7/24/2012 10:53:09 am

Hello Carrie,

I had the same feeling, too.

I love your question, "Will those whose family ties are inevitably threatened by horrific loss feel as though there is something wrong with them?"

You are really good with putting into theological language what I feel intuitively, but don't have the tools to name, yet.

We (whoever wants to) could work on writing a kind letter in this forum. What do you think?

Shawn

Melinda

7/25/2012 02:57:16 am

Thank you, Shawn, for another insightful and emotionally intelligent conversation. It is always Good to connect with you!
I often come away more jarred than whole when i attend such events. When I was a police chaplain, we often were part of public memorials for officers or firefighters, crime victims, etc. I share many of your questions, and conclusions, about suffering, grief, and love...
I also think our trouble is in part due to our inability to tolerate our own pain, and seek reconciliation with our own inner demons, and so we demonize and ostracize others into those same lost barren places where only demons can thrive.... and so we have, as a culture, banished James Holmes, and once again refused to see him as more like us than not, a fellow human being, an aspect of our own collective Shadow, and a son of our own Family.
Walter Wink says, in his book, Unmasking the Powers, that "it is finally love, love alone, that heals the demonic. It is our fear itself which gives the demonic its power."
He goes on to quote the translated poet Rilke, "Perhaps everything terrible is in its deepest being something helpless that wants help from us."
The entire book leaves me asking, perhaps in addition to public memorial services, we also very much need public exorcisms. Not witch hunts. "Exorcism is thus intercession for God's presence and power to liberate those who have become possessed by the powers of death. The demonic, by inference, is the will to power asserted against the created order. It is the psychic or spiritual power emanating from organizations or individuals or subaspects of individuals whose energies are bent on overpowering others. ...The march across the Selma bridge by black civil rights advocates was an act of exorcism. It exposed the demon of racism, stripping away the screen of legality and custom for the entire world to see." (Unmasking the Powers, 57-64)
Public memorials could be, in my mind, about radical hospitality, a hospital/hospitable place, that welcomes all, and offers sanctuary and palliative reconciliation to all, and does not force premature healing, and does not sustain the us-and-them dynamic of most pathetic attempts at community building.
I also appreciate Carrie, your balanced compassionate response in your post. It helps heal me, and see more clearly, where i can better embrace the stranger in my own public prayers.

Shawn

7/25/2012 04:12:50 am

Hello Melinda,

It’s good to hear from you. As usual, your ideas enrich and broaden my perspective, e.g., “public exorcisms” and “unmaking the powers.”

I think you are onto something when you say, “our trouble is in part due to our inability to tolerate our own pain.” I think, too, that we also do not know how to tolerate the pain of others or to sustain our toleration (when appropriate) for as long as they may need it or for as long as they need to tell a painful story again and again revealing a life clear as the bones of a glass catfish, no hiding behind venom or beauty.

Sometimes there’s no place to recoup a loss or make peace with traveling light. Can we tolerate those times when the terrible knowledge that all our regret can’t change what’s done? Can we tolerate a longing for understanding all the contradictions life exposes? Certainly one argument your post makes is for compassion for identifying with the other rather than making fascile judgments.

What the saints all tell us is “fast and pray.” For what I am not sure, but perhaps it’s not relief.

Terri C

7/27/2012 06:05:38 am

I like what Shawn and Melinda and Carrie are saying about opening space and exorcism. It has seemed to me as a chaplain that so much of popular understanding of "being spiritual" is about finding places of happiness and optimism and calm, and feeling that in such places, and only in such places, one is close to the divine. In response to Aurora, anger, shock, grief, loss of innocence, fear, and raw pain are certainly appropriate responses, and yet in some ways our public spiritual discourse does not easily make space for these except as feelings that must be replaced. Yet in joining in those hurt places and affirming (even if wordlessly) God's presence THERE one can offer a great service of presence and companioning.

I also think our cultural spiritual discourse, at least as I encounter it, continues to have real problems with evil, unless we can make it look as different from "us" as possible. Thus we replace the idea of spiritual protection and spiritual strength entirely by the ideas of physical protection and strength, and even when we think about spiritual forces like prayer, we think about them as a way of bringing about OUR desires. I don't speak very clearly on this topic I'm afraid, because I'm still fumbling to articulate what exactly I mean by "evil," so I apologize.

Couple things struck me: I did not hear from this horrific incident as I did in Columbine, "This shouldn't have happened here." Don't know why. Did hear some victim-blaming (Why would parents take children to a midnight movie?) but it didn't go far. Yes, lots of poorly informed rhetoric about mental illness and God's providence. We so deeply yearn to be able to say, "That couldn't have happened to me." I miss Carrie and Larry!!!!

delbert

7/29/2012 05:28:57 am

The God of all creation, the God of love, witnessed, as the hundreds of attendees in the theater did, the massacre of His children. Imagine His heart, His sorrow, His anger, at the way His creatures become in dealing with their personal issues. In His perfect love He created us to be His children, free to choose to return His love or reject Him. Sadly we too often choose the latter and with sometimes deadly consequences. We were not created robots; we are born with free will. This is our most precious gift - freedom to choose. How can I help to relieve just a little all the pain and suffering that is going on in Aurora as well as this world? I can reach out to others in need: the homeless, despite their issues or appearance; the lonely in nursing homes or hospitals; children who need mentors when there is no father at home; even inmates in jail or prison who have been abandoned by family and friends. Together we can bring healing to broken minds and lives. This is the work Jesus did while He walked on earth. His love demonstrated the high calling of compassion and caring worthy of our existence. My sorrow is deep for the victims, as some of my friends were also victims and now suffer from the trauma of that horrible night. Let us put aside hatred and revenge. Let us bond together to make our little worlds a better place for all.

Carrie

7/29/2012 09:39:52 am

Delbert:
Personally, I envision God as a mother sorrowing for her children. I think I share your sense of the pervasive compassion of God. However, I associate exclusively male imagery and male pronouns for God with the ways that Christianity has sometimes been used in patriarchal ways. That said, I concur with the ways in which you want to emulate the compassion of God by reaching out to others. It seems to me that acts of kindness and love can be a light in the darkness.

delbert

8/1/2012 01:10:16 pm

I respect your position about God and the compassion that is the very essence of God. I feel so compelled to go up to people who are walking with a gloom and great sadness about them. I want to simply say "hello" and that someone truly cares about you. I see them and my heart cries for them. Now I feel emboldened to speak up, carefully and softly, to encourage a response that may open the channel of communication which I hope will lead to understanding and healing. Loneliness is a great enemy of our mental health and my efforts to gently break through this wall may be the means that leads one to positive alternatives in dealing with difficult issues. I believe this was Jesus' practice while living on Earth. The Woman at the Well is an event that strengthens my belief. My prayers continue for the victims and families of the Aurora shooting. God bless them all.

Joseph Aidan link

8/13/2012 06:04:29 pm

Excellent! I admire all the helpful data you've shared in your articles. I'm looking forward for more helpful articles from you. :)

Joseph Aidan
www.arielmed.com

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