7/4/23 Speech
Time heals all wounds. At least that is what “they” say, and I used to agree with them whoever they were. But It’s hard to these days. We’ve learned the lesson that some wounds, some memories, some tragedies cut too deep, are too gnarled, and are too painful to simply leave to time. If left just to time, wounds go septic and the whole damn thing just festers and rots.
Last year we suffered a wound that cut deep, too deep into the very soul of our community. And just when I think the scabs are starting to form, just as I think time may actually work some magic to heal the pain, the news breaks. Another community is punctured with the very same injury we’re trying to heal ourselves. All that hurt, all that despair and all that hopelessness comes bleeding back to the surface. And I think to myself no, time alone won’t heal this wound. Time alone won’t bring back our feelings of safety. Time alone won’t bring back our innocence or our wholeness.
And So we’re left with the question of how are we to tend this wound? If time can’t heal it, will it ever go away or are we stuck just to live with it? My suspicion is if this is like the wounds of the past, it will heal but it’ll leave a scar - a jagged and rough and gnarled scar. On some days our fingers will brush by it, feeling its hard edges and the memories of this day a year ago will come flooding back. But friends, it willheal. Maybe not as quickly as we like. Maybe not as fully as we like. And maybe it’ll never go back to normal or quite the way it was, but it will heal. Not with time alone, but it will heal.
It will heal because we will gather together on days like today - not to forget but to remember. It will heal because we will gather to tend each other’s wounds, to wash away the rot of apathy, and to clear the stink of fatalism of believing that this is the way the world just is or that this is the way it has to be. It will heal because together we’ll apply the salve of hope in something better and stronger. It will heal because we’ll wrap each other in the bandages of love that makes our community something worth caring for. This wound will heal because God will take the fragments of our broken hearts and fit them together some way to make this world whole again somehow. This wound will heal because we are here together and while we may have legitimate differences, it will never override what unites us - the unshakeable trust in the intrinsic worth and dignity of every single human life.
Our community may never go back to what it once was. We may always carry the scar of July 4th, 2022 with us. But friends, it will heal. That healing will come in two ways. The first is in our togetherness - in knowing that we aren’t alone in our pain; we aren’t alone in this process and we will care for each other through it. And the second way this healing will come is by doing everything in our power and ability to make sure this doesn’t happen to another community. Enough is enough. Let us model for the rest of the country what true healing looks like - not with platitudes or cliche’s about time. But Rather, let us model this healing with the real work of loving our neighbor and tending to the soul and hurts of those wounded among us. And let us not rest. Let us not rest until every weapon is beaten into a plowshare, every gun into a pruning hook, and we study war and violence no more.