I still don’t know how to adequately describe the shock and disbelief that I feel about this tragic event.
Deep sorrow tangled with shame — shame that this could happen in a place that I have long boasted as being unrivalled in its ability to welcome and protect.
On Friday as the attacks unfolded, I was blissfully unaware of the destruction. We were in the middle of a rambunctious family reunion, the first time all my family had been together in over two years. We were filled with excitement and joy.
Then the horror of what had occurred in Christchurch broke through the walls of the safe space we had created. I took to the internet and social media, desperate to find answers.
On Sunday as I sat in my own religious congregation, I thought about those who were supposed to be safe, but weren’t. I thought about the senselessness of it all, and couldn’t even begin to fathom such hate.
Today I looked at the faces of the victims and read short blurbs of who they were. I read about a father who left a pregnant wife, and about another father who left a young son. My mind strayed and I couldn’t stop it. I began to think about my own wife and children, and how it would be to lose them, or them to lose me. I imagined being gunned down in my church. I had to stop the thought; the idea was too scary and too painful.
I keep asking myself, how did it even come to this?
How does someone become so angry that they willingly take the life of so many innocent people?
I get the heated and complex debate about immigration, but I cannot understand the pre-mediated, targeted rage against people who are in no way responsible for the creation of “the system.”
I ask myself, would something like this still have happened if the shooter knew the victims as people — if he knew their stories?
As Brené Brown said in her book Braving the Wilderness: “People are hard to hate close up. Move in.”
This tragedy is a wakeup call and opportunity for all of us to be better at moving in.
Do you know the name of your neighbour?
I don’t.
We moved to our current house one year ago, and I still awkwardly avoid my neighbour when walking home from the train at the same time.
It is really hard to hate someone when you get close up, when you know their story.
How can we as a community and society be better at knowing each other’s stories?
Maybe instead of being harder on migrants to adapt to our culture, we should be better at moving in, and learning who they are and what pains they have had to bare.
Just a thought.
Let’s move in.
