A note on Knoxville’s church shooting, and why I have to bring it up now
July 29, 2008 By: almostgotit Category: Knoxville Shooting, Uncategorized, rejectionYesterday morning, two miles away from my house, a man named Jim Adkisson burst into a church and started shooting people. Today we found out that Mr. Adkisson has not been able to find a job, and that he’d hoped to die in the shooting, too.
Last Friday, another man named Randy Pausch did die, after first inspiring an entire nation with his positive approach to life even as he was battling terminal cancer.
I do not presume to know why these two men reacted so differently to the adversity they faced. We *can not know* why some people are so much more resilient than others, nor what battles other people may still be fighting.
Most of the time, I can turn my own anger about my many, MANY rejections into humor — Malcolm Gladwell asserts that all comedy is based on anger! — and for the rest of week I’ll (almost always) be hilarious. Promise.
But let’s take the topic itself seriously. Telling a hurting, rejected person that he needs to stop feeling what he feels and feel something else instead (”stop wallowing,” etc.) is like rejecting that person all over again. We are a seriously repressed people, and we repress each other, too. I think most of us are afraid that being angry and upset, or even showing that we are angry and upset, metaphorically may be the same as killing people in a church. It is not.
July 29th, 2008 at 7:39 pm
I agree. In Harold Kushner’s Book “Living a Life that Matters” he has a chapter called “The Sweet Seduction of Revenge.” The chapter is an elegant explanation about the necessity of balance between forgiveness and justice for a society to be healthy. Essentially he says that if we don’t occasionally get outraged at the ills that befall our fellow man, then how can we ever expect them to give the time and emotional attention needed to their own healing. How exactly can they “stop wallowing” when raging injustice persists? He says it better than I do, of course!
July 29th, 2008 at 9:59 pm
I have not read that particular Kushner book, and thanks so much for bringing it to my attention!
July 30th, 2008 at 2:17 pm
The ironic thing is that Randy Pausch was a Unitarian Universalist. Here is a interview with with him by the UUA, the governing group for UU Congregations.
http://www.uua.org/news/newssubmissions/117142.shtml
I find it rather frustrating that Randy’s membership in UU hasn’t gotten more press with all this. In many of the interviews with him he is private about his church. I believe because UU’s don’t tend to be proselytizing. I wonder if Randy could have known what would happen two days after his passing and how his life story and the story of the shooting would be cohabiting the airwaves so much, would he have wanted more press about him being a UU.
July 30th, 2008 at 3:36 pm
And to add to the contrast you paint, Randy Pausch was a UU (Unitarian Universalist), and was probably the sort of person Mr. Adkisson had in his sights.
http://www.uua.org/news/newssubmissions/117142.shtml
July 30th, 2008 at 4:11 pm
Shane and Jo didn’t realize they were both pointing me to the same link and making the same observation about Randy Pausch’s denomination (I had no idea). Thanks so much to both of you for stopping by and adding this to the discussion. Irony, indeed.
July 30th, 2008 at 6:59 pm
Dear Almostgotit,
Your comment that showing or expressing anger for the repressed can metaphorically feel like shooting people in a church was pretty darned brilliant.
July 30th, 2008 at 9:44 pm
(quoting Almostgotit’s article)
What can we learn from the Knoxville’s church shooting?
Knoxville Police Chief sheds a little more light on the motivation of Adkisson’s murderous tirade. He blamed liberals from keeping him from a job. CBS News “He felt he was being kept out of the loop because of his age and because he was not liberal….
July 31st, 2008 at 8:55 am
Update: Yesterday our local paper posted exerpts of my entry about the Knoxville shooting in several places on their website. For a few hours it was Google City around here. I’d already written today’s entry (Almostgotit.com | Another Knoxville shooting: conclusions we cannot draw Says:
August 21st, 2008 at 5:03 pm
[...] shooting was a sad, sad thing in our city, still suffering from another senseless church shooting and murder just a few short weeks [...]
August 22nd, 2008 at 9:58 am
[...] Related post:A note on Knoxville’s church shooting, and why I have to bring it up now [...]