Last Sunday, August 5, a lone gunman killed six people and wounded a number of others at a Sikh temple in Oak Creek, Wisconsin. Jatinder Mangat is a nephew of the temple president. When he learned that people died, he said "it was like the heart just sat down."

Two weeks earlier, 12 were killed and dozens wounded at a movie theater in Aurora, Colorado. Two days after the Wisconsin shooting, the gunman accused of murdering six people in Arizona on January 8, 2011, and wounding several others, including U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, entered a plea in court. And next....?

On radio and TV, the responses have been predictable. Some advocate tighter gun control laws (which others oppose). Some call for better mental health services. The impact on society of violent entertainment is once again being discussed. The threats to (and perceived threats from) religious minorities in the United States are topics of conversation.

Please. Before staking out our political positions, before mounting our soapboxes to make our points, let us simply and truly mourn those who died. In all of this, what may be most disturbing is our ability - my ability - to watch the news, then simply change the channel; to scan the headlines and shrug before turning to the sports page.

"It was like the heart just sat down." May we take time for our hearts to sit down. To absorb the senseless loss and to grieve for the horrible violence that afflicts our society.

Old Testament scholar Walter Brueggemann writes of the prophet Jeremiah's "ministry of articulated grief," his calling to awaken lament in the hearts of "people with glazed eyes that looked and did not see." Breuggemann writes that "real criticism" and, hence, the hope of change "begins in the capacity to grieve because that is the most visceral announcement that things are not right" (The Prophetic Imagination, Fortress, 1978, pp. 20, 50-61).   

                                                             --by Bill