Sorrow and joy

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It is a Lunar New Year and the Year of the Rabbit, specifically the Water Rabbit that is believed to bring peace and calm. On my morning walk, I saw a bunny crouched beneath a bush. She was still as a statue except the dance of her nose, a little wiggle. I knew she was likewise spring-loaded, ready to dart at first sign of threat. Sure enough, a truck backfired in the distance and the bunny was gone.

This bunny reminded me of a poem by Naomi Sahib Nye in which she notes that, if you “enjoy fireworks” then “you would have to have lived a different kind of life.” Nye is the daughter of a Palestinian refugee. She knows people suffering from PTSD for whom fireworks evoke missile attacks. I see the bunny as cute and fireworks as a celebration. A truck backfiring is not cause for alarm. Heck, when I hear a car horn, my first reaction is to wave. My wife shakes her head: “He wasn’t greeting you!”

In light of recent news, you might imagine where I am going with this. In Monterey Park, California, the city’s celebration of the Lunar New Year was shattered by a mass shooting. According to several eyewitnesses, the gunfire initially sounded like firecrackers and was assumed to be yet another sign of the celebration. The shooting left 11 people dead and at least 10 more wounded. Heartbreaking.

I saw a picture the morning after of a banner in Monterey Park proclaiming “Happy Year of the Rabbit” with police officers standing guard underneath. There is a string of red lanterns overhead that the picture caught reflecting in the police’s long guns.

I’m writing Monday morning. I imagine that, in the days to come, details about the shooter will emerge, possibly motives. But I’m certain that, for the survivors and mourners, there is now “a different kind of life.” My heart breaks for them.

How are we to react? How terrible that we keep asking this question in the aftermath of yet another mass shooting. I hope we resist the urge to go back to our “normal” lives. Not everyone suffers the same things, but everyone suffers. Drawing on our experiences, we might notice the suffering of others, imagine what it’s like in Monterey Park or Ukraine. That attention might connect us.

Ross Gay’s new book “Inciting Joy” opens with a reflection on sorrow. Surprising that a book about joy begins with sorrow, and yet deeply profound. Gay writes, “We might call it sorrow, but we might call it a union, one that, once we notice it, once we bring it into the light, might be joy.” This is not meant to deny sorrow but rather empathize with it. And it is old wisdom: “Rejoice with those who rejoice, and weep with those who weep.” (Romans 12:15)

Rejoice and weep. Sorrow and joy — not either/or. Fireworks and rabbits and all they can mean. Monterey Park and you and me.

Andrew Taylor-Troutman is the pastor of Chapel in the Pines Presbyterian Church. His newly-published book is a collection of his columns for the Chatham News + Record titled “Hope Matters: Churchless Sermons.”