Author’s Note: The following was written on May 24 in the morning. The same day that news broke of the tragic school shooting in Texas, but hours earlier.
Lately, I have been attending a church that is not in this town, though it is a town of similar size. I have not been a member of its congregation for very long; I was invited to sing with their choir by a fellow soprano with whom I have become friends at the Polymnia Choral Society. It is a “welcoming” and “affirmative” church; its doors are open to all — regardless of race, color, religious affiliation and belief, gender identification, or sexual partner preference. It allows women to be ministers. Its sanctuary is just that — a sanctuary, a place of peace, for prayer and contemplation, a home of openhearted warmth and love. Fred and I both sing with the choir and I play bells with the bell choir. We have enjoyed the several choir rehearsals and services we have attended. Everyone is very warm and friendly, and the pastor’s preaching resonates with us; she is current, funny, expressive, passionate, and filled with joy.
This past Sunday, we arrived early; the choir typically has a brief run-through of the well-practiced anthem before the service begins. As we pulled into the parking lot, a police cruiser pulled in and parked in a space in the row directly ahead of us. “Hmmm,” I thought, wondering if something was wrong, if another choir member or the choir director, perhaps, had taken ill or fallen down some stairs or something. We hastened inside. We stopped in the room where cubbies hold our music and folders, retrieved the piece for the morning, and mounted the stairway to enter the sanctuary. A choir member approached me and said in hushed tones, “Something has happened,” and tilted her head in the direction of the choir loft and the organ. It was very quiet, but there was the policeman, in deep conversation with the organist, the pastor, and the assistant minister. A conversation that went on for quite some time, while choir members sat expectantly in the foremost pews. Eventually the policeman left the sanctuary, the organist and pastor descended the three steps from the choir loft, and the choir was able to gather to do our run-through. It was then that we were told that there had been an incident of “hate messaging.” The words, “I will kill you” had been scrawled — in “beautiful cursive,” according to the organist—across a whiteboard that was used by the choir director for keeping track of the schedule of anthems to be practiced during rehearsals.
Sunlight poured through the sanctuary windows; flowering trees, branching with clusters of pink and white, were crystal clear against a sky so breathtakingly blue it seemed impossible that those words had been uttered. “I will kill you.” Surely just a prank; some teenager, probably. Just someone who must have somehow gotten into the choir room at some point in the three days following our recent rehearsal and wanted to create a bit of mischief. Inspire a bit of fear. Have a laugh. Ha ha. Not funny.
It was a week and a day after the supermarket shooting in Buffalo. “I will kill you.” Written — “in beautiful cursive” — at some point during the media attention that swirled around the Tops Friendly Markets store in Buffalo, New York.
It was decided that we should proceed with the service as though nothing untoward had happened; we were cautioned not to touch anything and told to remain on the floor of the sanctuary and not go into the choir loft and organ area. Evidence gathering would be happening after the service was over. The pastor told us to keep the situation to ourselves — to make no mention to other congregants who had not yet arrived. Surely, it was just a prank. No need to upset everyone. To err on the side of “an overabundance of caution,” the church doors would be locked after the last of the congregants had entered and the service just begun. A church member would stand guard in the narthex. But nothing more would happen. “I will kill you.” Surely, just a prank.
The title of the sermon was “Visions of Unity and Peace!” Hymns included, “God Is Here” and “For the Healing of the Nations.” Throughout the pastor’s message, as I heard her words encouraging love and peace, I kept envisioning “I will kill you.” In beautiful cursive.
It was one of the longest church services that I can remember sitting through, ever, anywhere, in any of the churches that I have attended. Our backs to the sanctuary entrance. Fred and I clasping hands perhaps a little more tightly than usual. As the organist had said, cautioning us not to worry and at the same time urging us to be wary, “These days . . . one can’t be too sure . . .” Indeed. Perhaps NOT just a prank. Perhaps some disgruntled citizen of the town who didn’t appreciate the “welcoming to ALL” spirit of the church and who would be hiding, AK-47 or M16 cocked, behind a pinkly flowering shrub by the entrance to the church, ready to gun us down as we departed—departed with our hearts filled with visions of unity and peace.
The pastoral prayer, composed to beseech the Father/Mother/Creator for blessings of peace and love and all goodness for all people, included thoughts for those affected by the recent shooting in Buffalo. Tears filled my eyes as she asked for a peace that would make it possible for us all to enter a grocery store — or a church — without fear.
I have been accused on multiple occasions and by multiple people of being “too sensitive.” Nothing terrible did happen at that church service, so “I will kill you” was, apparently, just a kid’s prank. But in the days since, I have dwelled on it. That’s how I am. And I can say, now, that I understand how grocery market employees might be stocking their shelves while casting one eye over their shoulders. I understand how schoolteachers and school children — those who are old enough to be aware — might feel, each and every day, when they enter their school building. I feel it in the pit of my stomach . . . sorrow . . . how parents must go through their days with a quiet, unvoiced, but naggingly constant feeling of dread, wondering what might be happening while their kids are in a supposedly safe environment that might not, after all, be safe.
Author’s Note: At this point, I stopped writing. 1:30. The piece was not finished, but I needed to take a break to mull over how I would finish it. Then I would need to go over it a couple more times to make corrections—those pesky commas—and, of course, to spiff it up—to “tweak” it—others tweet, I tweak. I went outside to pull weeds and walk around the “estate.”
It is late afternoon now and I return to this essay after the tragic news has interrupted “regularly scheduled programming.” In the other room, the TV is on. I sit, numbed, as newscasters quote statistics about school shootings and officials ramble on with details about yet another mass shooting that killed 14 children and one teacher and left others hospitalized. As specialists speculate on the unknown but obviously screwed-up mental state of the shooter and highlight the particularly horrific slaughter done by high-powered weaponry.
I have decided not to compose a final paragraph, after all. Nor to tweak. Just to add my impassioned plea to that which I just witnessed Senator Chris Murphy — on his knees — implore of Congress. Something MUST be done. Dear God, help us.
