Reyerwalk Ranch

Anne Lamott: "I got used to having to teach my Sunday School kids after school shootings, this being America. Jesus weeps, the innocent suffer. This weekend, a college campus, a synagogue in Australia, a cherished celebrity couple in Los Angeles. (And God almighty, the sickness and indecency of our president’s response to the latter.)

The kids feel helpless and hopeless after these shooting, and I do, too. I always share with them the old Annie saws, which is what I am going to share with you here—I remind them of what Mr. Roger’s mother said, that in the face of tragedy and hopelessness we look to the helpers, the profound and immediate presence of the first responders, the people serving them coffee and sandwiches through the night. I remind them of how we as a people, a community, a nation come together with incredible courage and generosity of spirit in the aftermath of shootings, floods, fires.

Life is much wilder, sweeter, violent, heartbreaking, weirder, richer, more insane, awful, beautiful and profound than we were prepared for as children, or that I am comfortable with as a grownup. In my Sunday School classes after tragedy, we always spend extra time making art—cards for children in the towns where shootings took place, or for the people in the regular church whose hearts are broken. Someone said that art is the greatest expression of the human spirit; my kids are glitter glue cantors. We’ve made garlands out of coffee filters to string in our fellowship hall, to remind people of peace and buoyancy. The paradox is that in the face of our meager efforts, we discover that in the smallest moments of taking in and making beauty, in actively being people of goodness and mercy and outreach, we are saved."