I’m in trial, doing my best to zealously advocate for a client who is up against the implacable machinery of the State. The case is no big deal, but I’m het up about it anyway since it’s yet another case where police responded to a confusing situation by just citing the nearest guy rather than thinking for five minutes about what’s going on or whether the situation will really be improved by subjecting a person to court process. My client is theoretically facing a maximum of 90 days in jail (90 days in a cage) and a $1000 fine, but as a practical matter he’s unlikely to sit any jail time and any fine (plus appropriate surcharges and fees) will probably be somewhere around $300. I manage to win this one, and I have a lot of fun doing it; the circumstances of the case allow me to be more than a little irreverent in court. I win this one: one tiny, silly victory that saves my client from being inconvenienced and raises my spirits. One tiny middle finger to the American police state.
While I’m winning, a man with a gun shoots his grandmother and then walks into an elementary school in Texas and murders two dozen people, most of them children.
While I’m celebrating my victory and preparing for the next challenge, families gather in horror at the Uvalde Civic Center to find out whether one of the murdered children belongs to them. Reporters stationed outside the civic center hear screams, as yet another mother learns that her baby is dead or dying. Some harried doctor or city employee is charged with telling these people, individually; relaying the news from the nearby hospitals: a terrible thing has happened, and it has happened to you. I pray for that person. I try to pray for the families, too, and the children, but find it difficult, because it feels obscene. What possible help can there be for these people, living the worst day of their lives? Christ have mercy; Christ have mercy.
A friend of mine is scheduled to be playing D&D this evening. I am not playing the game, because I am preparing for another trial, but I can see the chat log — my friend is apologizing for something, presumably for not paying as much attention to the game as he feels he should have. My friend is the pastor of a church that is very far away from Texas. He is trying to play D&D, but in between turns, he is writing a pastoral email that will go out to his parishioners about the shooting. He is also trying to determine what the fuck he is supposed to say at his church’s preschool graduation tomorrow, given Uvalde. He posts the pastoral email on Facebook. I read it. It is a good email.
A basketball team is supposed to play another basketball team this evening. The coach has been yelling at Republican Congressmen for some time now about gun control. He is angry that the federal government is not doing anything to stop the many times that a man with a gun walks into a church, or a school, or a supermarket, and murders people. In the pretrial press conference before the game, he refuses to talk about basketball. He yells at the Republican Congressmen some more. It is a good speech. His team plays the basketball game. They lose, but there will be more basketball games, and they are two games ahead in the series. It will probably be okay. The Republican Congressmen are, presumably, unmoved.
One of my oldest and dearest friends announces the good news: his son has been born! There is a new person in the world, a person who belongs to my friend and his wife and their two other children, and to whom they belong in turn. The world is infinitely increased by this; all the world is forever changed, because there is a new person in it. Someday, I know, I will meet this person, and I will think about how I first heard about this person on the same day that a man with a gun infinitely diminished the world by murdering 20 other children.
We do not yet know why the man with the gun wanted to kill these people. A Republican Congressman who is famously hated by his own family tweets that the man with the gun was a “transsexual leftist illegal alien.” This appears to be false, though at this stage in the proceedings I suppose anything is possible. Everyone yells at him. He deletes the tweet. He will, I tell myself, someday have to answer to a higher justice than ours.
It does not really matter why the man with the gun killed these people. He killed them because he wanted to kill them, and because he had the means to do so, because of the choices made by our Congresspeople, because of the choices made by each of us. This is what the basketball coach is mad about. The man with the gun is dead, so it feels useless to castigate him. I do it anyway. I do not believe in Hell, at least not the way it is commonly envisioned. I have read David Bentley Hart, I know that a God who permits infinite suffering as a punishment for finite evils is not the God who created the heavens and the earth. I nevertheless hope that the man with the gun goes to Hell. This is not a good thought, but I think it anyway. I will, someday, have to answer for this to a higher justice than ours.
The basketball coach is preparing for another basketball game; the Republican Congressman who wrote the tweet is continuing to be himself, itself a terrible-though-insufficient punishment. It is raining in Oklahoma City; the sun is rising in Oxford. My little white dog is barking at a passing train; my friend the pastor is agonizing about what to say tomorrow. The harried doctor or city employee is breaking the hearts of another family; my friend with the newborn son is staring at the great joy visited upon him. The man with the gun is answering for his actions to a higher justice than ours; the President is tweeting useless platitudes. We are all of us unsure what to do. The families in Uvalde are weeping. The Beauty of the House is Immeasurable; its Kindness, Infinite. The peace of God, which passeth all understanding, must, somehow, keep our hearts and minds through Christ Jesus.
I have another trial tomorrow.