Prayers after the New Zealand Shootings at a Mosque

I awoke to news of shootings in two mosques in New Zealand.  As I have written on the news of another shooting, I have no words.  Or, more accurately, I have words, but it feels so futile.

A shooting at a religious site is more shocking to me than other shootings.  I am sad to report that I've become a bit used to school shootings, although I always force myself to remember that school shootings did not used to be so common.  I went to high school in Knoxville, Tennessee.  The high school parking lot was full of trucks with gun racks, some of them with guns in them--but we didn't shoot each other.  We were much more creative.

But a religious site still makes me pause.  And today, shootings in New Zealand, not a common place for stories of violence of any kind.  I've always given New Zealand all sorts of credit:  first to give women the right to vote and resistance to the nuclear arms race, especially in the 1980's.

And it's not difficult to imagine what was in the shooter's manifesto that he (it's always a he) left.  I'm glad that authorities have decided not to release it.

So, once again, we pray.  We pray for all of those minorities who now feel a bit more targeted because of the shootings. I pray for the rest of us too, because these acts of violence make us all feel less safe. I pray for all the tortured souls who pick up weapons to deal with whatever consumes them.
 
But above all, I pray with yearning for the day when the promise is fulfilled, when Creation is fully redeemed, when we no longer fear this kind of horror.