...We chase the melodies that seem to find us
Until they’re finished songs and start to play,
When senseless acts of tragedy remind us
That nothing here is promised, not one day.
This show is proof that history remembers
We live through times when hate and fear seem stronger.
We rise and fall, and light from dying embers,
Remembrances that hope and love last longer.
And love is love is love is love
Is love is love is love is love –
Cannot be killed or swept aside...
- from Lin-Manuel Miranda’s acceptance speech at the Tony Awards
These words are excerpted from a sonnet that the creator of the Broadway musical “Hamilton” composed yesterday and read when he received the Tony for Best Original Score. Listening to his passionate, tear-filled delivery was cathartic, not only for the people in the auditorium, but for millions like me watching at home who had been struggling all day to find words for how we felt. The worst mass shooting in American history had taken the lives of fifty young adults and injured 53 more, targets of an ISIS-inspired, mentally disturbed gunman who entered an LGBT-friendly nightclub and opened fire with high-powered assault weapons he had legally purchased.
When Miranda’s poem crescendoed through eight consecutive beats of “love,” cheers and applause erupted in the theatre. My heart swelled with gratitude that someone had broken the awful silence of anger, grief, and confusion with soaring words of hope.
The Orlando tragedy feels like a confluence of just about everything that is wrong with the world. I think that’s why it is so difficult to talk about. Where do you even start?
Miranda’s tribute to the power of love is a good place. And it leads me to reflect that hate is hate is hate is hate is hate is hate is hate is hate. People hate for different reasons, but none of it is justified – whether it is rooted in Islamic extremism, Christian fundamentalism, Jewish Zionism, cultural conservatism, liberal elitism, American nativism, racism, ethnocentrism, or any other “ism.” One form of hate is no more or less acceptable than another. Hate is always wrong all the way through. And the only way it is undone is for enough of us to stop perpetuating its cycle of death by obeying Jesus’ command to love our enemies.
Blood-soaked dismembered bodies sprawled over a nightclub floor gruesomely reveal what is wrong with us. What is next? Will all that is right with us now rise to the surface and prevail?
It might be close, but I’m hoping, because “love cannot be killed or swept aside.”
©2016 by J. Mark Lawson
The Orlando tragedy reminds me of the time I lived down in South Carolina where racism still prevails. The thought of hating a person based on skin color is foreign to me but the reasoning behind it is far worse. When I asked my employees what have these people done to you, the response was "Nothing, we were just brought up this way". Hate in my opinion is stubbornness to change. Our lives are based on choices we have to make on a daily basis in order to survive. Without these "life choices", change cannot occur where growth can occur. My cousin is the owner of the bar "Rain" down in the city off of Geddes Street. I still respect him today as I did while growing up as kids. To hate based on someone else's choice of lifestyle where it does not affect me boggles the mind. I do believe that all tragedies lead to something good. Let God have the final word.
Posted by: Dave Rosenfeld | 06/17/2016 at 03:08 PM
Heard this too, Mark, and it rattled me with how passionate and raw it was.
We wondered how Hitler could come to power but the wondering is over as, trading on the SAME things to foment strife and fear, we have another being born right here right now. Discernment...wisdom.. we could do with that.
Posted by: Margaret Luttinger | 06/13/2016 at 07:37 PM