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Opening for the Vigil on the Eastern Tennessee Shootings
July 22, 2008

We gather tonight as people affected. In a world where we have become somewhat inured to news of bomb blasts in marketplaces and buses, in shootings at universities and schools, in counts of victims of natural disasters, a shooting in a church – a shooting in a Unitarian Universalist church – breaks through the cacophony of daily news of violence to break our hearts. 

We can picture waking up this past Sunday morning and deciding whether to go to church. We can picture our own children or grandchildren singing their hearts out to the songs from Annie on the altar. We can picture the video cams, and the proud parents and grandparents, and the chalice lit in the front of the sanctuary.

What we couldn’t picture, until the past 48 hours, was a man, entering the sanctuary with a shotgun in a guitar case, tackling the head usher and beginning to shoot. According to news reports, 58- year- old Mr. Adkisson, frustrated because of his inability to find employment shot 9 people, killed Greg McKendry and Linda Kreager, and left seven other people in the hospital.  He told the police that he “targeted the church because of its liberal teachings” and that he “hated liberals in general, as well as gays.”

We gather tonight to remember Mr. McKendry and Ms. Kreager, and those who were injured at the Tennessee Valley Unitarian Universalist Church, and to hold in our hearts and prayers those who are injured, those who were present and saw the shootings,  the members of both churches affected, their families, and those 25 children singing on that stage. Yesterday, those 25 children sang “The sun will come out tomorrow” at a neighboring church’s memorial service.

We come together tonight to share our grief – our anger – to honor one another -- to know that we are not alone. One of the responsive readings in our hymnal says, “We need one another when we mourn and would be comforted. We need one another when we are in trouble and afraid. We need one another when we are in despair…we need one another in the hour of defeat, when with encouragement, we might endure, and stand again.”

We need one another. We are glad you are here.

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