This is a slightly edited version of a reflection I was asked to give at today’s Big Sky Unitarian Universalist fellowship. The given topic was the poem, often attributed to the Dalai Lama, called The Paradox of our Time (or Age).

An original, lengthier text by that title is by Bob Moorehead (on the false attribution to the Dalai Lama read here).

The Paradox of our Time

When I was first invited to offer a reflection on this poem I read it and thought about the importance of community. Perhaps the lines:

We’ve been all the way to the moon and back But have trouble crossing the street to meet the new neighbour.

led me to that.

It was my need for community that first brought me to UU eight months ago, and the kindness and generosity that I have seen that has kept me here.

Like many of you, I was stunned this week to learn about yet another mass shooting in America, this one occurring at Umpqua Community College in Oregon. Unlike most of you, however, I heard about this about two hours before I was to arrive on campus to teach my own class at the University of Montana.

I paused. My heart sank.

And then I had to return to class preparations, making sure my notes were in order, my lecture well-rehearsed.

President Obama said in his address to the nation on Thursday after the attack that “we’ve grown numb to this.”

He is right. We’ve come to not just accept that things like this will happen, but to expect them. The thought cannot help but pass through my mind at times when I am on campus in Missoula: “when will it happen here? Where will I be?”

This has become a reality of living in America.

I recently lived for 4 years in England. This is not a reality in England, or the rest of Western Europe. I read about Australia, where a mass shooting that left 35 dead in 1996 sparked a revolution in gun control.

Data around the gun control following that massacre is difficult to fully dissect. One article claims that in the years after, “the risk of dying by gunshot in Australia fell by more than 50% — and stayed there” While the gun control also “led to a drop in firearm suicide rates of almost 80% in the following decade.”[1] Another article on Australia shows graphs of both gun-related suicide and homicide rates already trending downward in that country before the gun control reforms.[2] A Pew Research Center study shows similar in the USA as well, where gun homicide peaked in 1993.[3][3b] Another article suggests five ways to cut gun violence that have nothing to do with gun control, such as funding more drug and alcohol rehabilitation centers, reforming prison sentences, investing in young people of color who at present are more likely to be expelled or suspended from school than their white counterparts for similar offenses, more likely to be stopped and harassed by authorities, and ultimately more likely to wind up in prison after they reach adulthood, and addressing structural violence especially against black men, as well as the growing problem of income inequality in America.[4]

These are political reflections, and may seem at a distance from our spiritual lives here, but the problems of our society – those so well-articulated in this poem – are political as much as they are personal.

As I said, I lived for 4, nearly 5, years in England. I didn’t have to change anything personally to simply feel more safe and at ease there. It wasn’t just the missing spectre of gun violence, but also a socialized healthcare system, where I knew no illness would have to go untreated due to personal financial problems.

As I believe this poem helps us to reflect on our own values and commitments as individuals, I also ask that we step back and take a deeper look at our society. Winston Churchill once remarked that “We shape our buildings, and afterwards our buildings shape us.” Well, we’ve collectively shaped a society where shootings like this happen with numbing regularity, and that cannot help but shape us as individuals: stressed, fearful, isolated.

The very strongest of us cannot help but feel this weight, how much harder it must be for the vulnerable. I’ll borrow a few words from Zen priest (and fellow Patheos blogger Domyo Burk) who wrote:

… here’s how to respond to this latest shooting, which I imagine has brought tears to many of our eyes: Be kind. Reach out to people. Support community wherever you find it. Be generous. Give people the benefit of the doubt. Listen to them. Don’t get caught up in hatred, blaming, and fear – these things only contribute to the sad state of our society.[5]

And I’ll add to her words that this is not just a “response” but a “practice” to be cultivated, in the hope that some random act of kindness, our kindness, can be the act that brings hope or calm or simply pause to the next person who might be motivated to cause such harm to our society, to us all.

[1] http://www.cnn.com/2015/10/02/world/can-legislation-prevent-mass-shootings/

[2] http://www.nationalreview.com/article/425021/australia-gun-control-obama-america

[3]7 deaths per 100,000 people in 1993, 3.6 in 2010. http://www.pewsocialtrends.org/2013/05/07/gun-homicide-rate-down-49-since-1993-peak-public-unaware/ 3.55 in 2013, http://www.gunpolicy.org/firearms/region/united-states. See p.27 here for total gun homicides going back to 1980, http://www.bjs.gov/content/pub/pdf/htus8008.pdf. Interestingly, that corresponds directly with the passage and implementation of the Brady Law regulating handguns, http://https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brady_Handgun_Violence_Prevention_Act

[4] http://mic.com/articles/126199/6-surprising-ways-to-curb-gun-violence-that-have-nothing-to-do-with-gun-control

[5] http://www.patheos.com/blogs/myjourneyofconscience/2015/10/02/not-just-guns-and-madmen-our-whole-society-is-insane/

See also Nicholas Kristof’s editorial in yesterday’s New York Times, where he writes:

We’ve mourned too often, seen too many schools and colleges devastated by shootings, watched too many students get an education in grief. It’s time for a new approach to gun violence. We’re angry, but we also need to be smart. And frankly, liberal efforts, such as the assault weapons ban, were poorly designed and saved few lives, while brazen talk about banning guns just sparked a backlash that empowered the National Rifle Association.

Frank Bruni’s editorial in the same paper, addressing guns on campus, is also very much worth reading. As is James Ford’s A Small Meditation on Violence and Choice.