Things seem really dark this year. I realized that this week as I have been thinking about “Good’” Friday” and “Holy Saturday”. Don’t even get me started on my frustration with it being called “Good” Friday. In Christian tradition, the Friday and Saturday between Maundy Thursday and Easter Sunday are days of darkness and grief as we mourn the death of Jesus. I admirably respect the traditions that acknowledge the death as much as the resurrection. In order for there to be a resurrection, there had to be a death. When I took Old Testament during seminary, I had to write a paper on what Holy Saturday would be like for the followers of Jesus, in the Gospels. It was one of my best works. Sadly, I can’t find it. But I wrote about the darkness of the death and how the people navigated between the darkness and the hope. I imagined there was an internal struggle, wondering if Jesus would actually come back. The people walked around in mourning, reviewing the images of the crucifixion that were forever etched in their hearts. While reviewing the images, Jesus’s voice could be overheard, with his promise, a promise he made himself; that hey would return. And just like any other individual in mourning, they wondered if he actually would.
It is Friday, April 7, 2023 and I feel like we are in that darkness. I know I feel that way. I feel like as a country, as a world really; we’ve been going through the darkness for quite some time. As I walk through the hallways of my work, I have seen a lot of darkness. As I think about what I’ve seen in the hospital, there is a lot of darkness and the overcast of clouds are only making it worse.
It’s not Covid this time. It is gun violence. It’s always been gun violence. There has been a steady increase. There has been a rapid increase in violence and what’s worse, the victims and the shooters are getting younger. They are teenagers, some barely out of their tweens. Their bodies look like red stained Swiss cheese and their faces look like children who had no way of knowing how to maneuver through their lives. Their bandages can’t stop the blood seeping from their heads. Their heads are suffering not only from penetrating gun shot wounds but also from a lack of minds that are mature enough to face what they have to face every day. The families are at bedside, crying in the darkness of their grief that they are too scared to acknowledge.
When i leave work for the day, i try hard to keep my promise of not watching the local news. I see the news every day in the hospital, so i don’t need to see it on tv or internet. Sadly, the news from around the country manages to enter my doors that i’ve tried hard to lock. The children i stood next to today were not the only children shot. Gun violence is the number one killer of children in the United States. When I leave work, i know i am not the only trauma chaplain holding the hands of grief stricken families. There are parents in other parts of the state and in other parts of the country, sitting at the bedside of their children. They are thinking about the last thing they did together, the last words they exchanged, the last time they heard their child laugh and wondering if they can afford the child size coffin they are too afraid to consider.
It’s incredibly dark right now and I am walking around in a bit of a haze. There are images playing in my head about the events i’ve seen on the news from Tennessee, Sandy Hook, and Columbine, just to name a few. The images of children i’ve seen in the hospital are running through my mind, too. I wonder what i will see tomorrow. I am not exactly sure but i am not feeling very hopeful that the promise of a resurrection will come true.
This Chaplain's Journey 