More Light Presbyterians - A prayer of rage and lament for Colorado Springs

Screams!  It is all we can utter to God. Screams of anger and anguish at the senseless loss of sacred wondrous beings.  We scream because we cannot keep it locked in. We cannot allow this despairing rage to inhabit us.  We will not allow the violence that lead to this heinous act of hatred to claim space in our bodies and psyches.  We scream because many are injured, and Kelly Loving, Daniel Aston, Derrick Rump, Ashley Paugh, and Raymond Green Vance breathe no more; their lives cut short by hate at a place sacred to so many because it allowed all who entered to be fully embodied and celebrated, to express their true selves, to love without restraint.  We scream because ours is a nation where their deaths are not surprising. If anything, they are inevitable, justified by partisan propaganda that leverages the hate of Trans and Gender Expansive bodies in the pursuit of power. Facilitated by the collaboration of religious leaders whose rhetoric sacralizes the disposability, harming, and killing of Trans and Gender Expansive bodies. Aided by the hesitant speech of so many progressive religious leaders who will not unequivocally declare that Trans, Gender Expansive and Queer bodies are inherently worthy, sacred, made holy by the Creator God.  We scream our way through the immobility, the grief, the despair, and fear, because it is our faith tradition to do so.  “Cry loudly, do not hold back; Raise your voice like a trumpet, And declare to My people their wrongdoing, And to the house of Jacob their sins.” Isaiah 58:1 We scream our way into conspiracies for liberation because we know the violence that claims our siblings threatens all life. It is a force so committed to the hoarding of power that it endangers all those whose ways of being challenge their cis-heteropatriarchal Christian control. And so we scream our commitment to work with others to heal and repair this wound as well as to build strategies to dismantle the worldview, the systems of belief, the partisan strategies, and the silences that will not set us free. Join us.  Cry loudly with us.  Scream with us.  Say the names of those taken with tenderness and care. Pray for those left behind.  Say the names of those whose violent speech and their silences made this loss possible. Collaborate with others to hold them accountable.  Cry loudly with us.  Scream with us.  Join us.

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