Searching was the theme on Tuesday night. Searching for answers, searching for solace; the folks gathered for the candlelight vigil at Rotary park to remember the killed and injured in the Orlando nightclub shooting were in search of some meaning to carry forward.
Except for whispers, an occasional shout from a child, folks were silent, holding their candles. It seemed they had lost the ability to speak, perhaps out of numbness following the news that another mass shooting had torn the heart out of another American community.
In a still sky, magpies, herons and a single nighthawk crossed overhead, searching for shelter, searching for sustenance. Many in the crowd watched the birds wistfully, searching, it seemed, for a similar refuge from their own fear of darkness.
The crowd was searching, too, for words. And there were many heartfelt, thoughtful words from local leaders and organizers. They said the right things. They spoke what was in their wounded hearts. Yet something seemed to be missing, something that was found incongruously in the parts of the vigil removed from understanding a common language.
The connections came, and the tears flowed, when Eddie Box Jr. called out to “grandfather,” in a blessing that was also a prayer, and when his fellow Southern Utes sang a blessing song punctuated by a booming drum. It happened again when Norman Lopez of the Ute Mountain Utes performed his traditional song. He seemed to pull grief itself out of the crowd and deliver it back in a language both searing and soothing.
Few people knew the words. Yet no one could mistake their meaning.
Comprehension came again when Kevin Bell delivered his solo, a Gregorian chant written a thousand years ago. In the singing, in the original Latin, the vigil gained momentum, clarity and meaning.
Did the silence at the start of the ceremony come from respect for the gravity of the gathering? Was it the result of this repetitive cycle of grief and shock at these incomprehensible acts of violence? And was this shock in turn magnified by the confusion and frustration brought on by the equally incomprehensible lack of solutions to the violence? Have we lost our ability to communicate on this issue?
We say the right things. We demand action. We vow to never let it happen again. And yet again we see our words head down the same avenues that lead to the political cul-de-sacs of gun control vs. Second Amendment rights, of religious freedoms vs. militant calls for holy war, of personal freedoms vs. security.
Have words themselves failed us, or have we lost faith in our words?
If so, this must change. This is what carried clearly into the night, carried with real power in the Latin, in the singing, in the smoke of candles and in the drums. We must find a way to restart these debates in a way that drops the slogans, ignores the old debates, avoids the anger and the repetitive rhetoric and leads us somewhere other than this all-too-familiar destination littered with firearms and empty shell casings and covered in blood.
We have to search, in any language, new words that leave the rage at the scene of the last mass-shooting crime. We owe it to the victims in Orlando. We owe it to ourselves.
