Silence, Murder, and Responsibility

This morning's paper reported a father shot his five children and then himself. The mother was not home at the time, and is now quite traumatized.

Yesterday's paper - 13 killed in an immigration center, the gunman shooting himself in the end. This was just three hours away from my home.

In the last 30 days, today's news marks the fifth case of multiple murders in the U.S. The headline in yesterday's paper was "When Will This Stop?"

I think the recession has hit everyone hard, and people are reacting with more hopelessness than necessary. If there was ever a time that we need to reach out and be kind to strangers, now is that time. A kind word of hope, encouragement, friendship - in these tumultuous times - could save a life.

I understand the urge to murder. Even premeditated. I have imagined committing murder and I have survived attempted murder. My first husband lost it one night, and I ended up in the hospital and him in jail. I was 24 years old. I'm lucky to be here today.

When I was 15, I wanted to commit murder. I imagined every detail of it - getting a big knife from the kitchen in the middle of the night, creeping into my mother's room, and plunging it right into her heart. Not out of anger, or out of fear for myself, but out of duty. I was the oldest of four girls, and she was traumatizing us all - especially my younger two sisters. At that moment, at 15, laying in my bed in the dark and listening to my little sister screaming, I was too frozen and frightened to move, to rescue her. So I imagined murder as my way to rescue her and my other sisters. My sister'sscreams turned to sobs, and my mother's angry tread and bedroom door slam indicated the worst was over. I didn't dare go to my sister yet - I knew what would happen if I did. We were not allowed to comfort each other. I fell asleep, comforted by the thought of matricide. I woke up the next morning and knew I could never do it. And I felt ashamed for not having the courage to murder my own mother.

Telling someone else? like the police, or even a school counselor? Out of the question. At that time, my sisters and I were very clear that we could never beseparated, and reporting our mother meant separate foster homes. Never would we report her. And that bond we forged has existed to this day - you will never find a closer group of sisters - even though we live many miles away from each other. We know now, as adults, that of course we should have reported her. She could have got treatment if we had, and we would have eventually found each other again, or not have beenseparated at all. As an adult, I know there are many options other than murder, and it wasn't lack of courage that made me stop, it was my own humanity.

But I have children of my own, now. And if I should walk in and find someone hurting one of my daughters, I'd probably not think to call the police - the human animal inside me would roar forth and my teeth and nails would be ripping that person apart.

It is likely my childhood has made me more likely to commit a crime of passion than the average person, not that I would, but statistically speaking it's more likely. Perhaps my natural sense of humanity - even in that situation - would step in again and I'd hang onto rational behavior. Hitting the perp over the head and knocking him cold would be more rational than tearing out his ears with my teeth and thrusting my thumbs in his eyes and tearing the flesh from his bones - but not near assatisfying.

See? I understand murder from the perspective of a mountain lion protecting her cubs. Whether my sisters or my own children, I do understand that I have that capacity, and I understand that it is a capacity in all of us. Pain, fear, protection, survival - these can all be the source of passionate or premeditated murder. Yes, yes - we can work on ourselves through faith and counseling and meditation and rebuilding and a host of other healing options, but we don't live in a world that can work if we think to heal only ourselves. We can start there, but we can't stop there.

Our culture in America has become so closed and private. We don't communicate with our neighbors beyond a friendly hello. We feel shame when we fall down, and don't ask for help from even our own family unless we truly have no other choice. Americans honor the self so much that we have lost connection to other humans, to nature, to our spirits. It's one thing to be of a bootstrap mentality - it is honorable to be self-reliant and break your own path. But it's another thing to take that to its extreme and cut ourselves off so much that we don't see what's happening right under our noses, or we wait to ask for help when it is too late.

What happened to me and my sisters is nothing compared to what happened to my mother. I know, now, where her behavior came from. And it just proves my point:

It is not the aggressor that is hurting our country. It is the silence of good people who could have done something about it before it escalated.

Our country was founded on the principle that those who have the ability to take action, have the responsibility to take action. Not vigilante-ism, no Big Brother, no overly-quick accusations, no tattling. That's not what that principle means. Ultimately, it simply means, Love Thy Neighbor.

With murder, there are always as many clues beforehand as afterward. We need to stop ignoring those clues, stop saying "it's not my place to interfere." There is a balance between having some sense ofresponsibility for the people in your community and being a watchdog/tattle-tale. We need to find that balance, be respectful of our neighbors who wish privacy, yet open enough so they know they can always change their mind. Do that - be IN the world as much as OF the world, and our culture will open doors that are alternatives to murder for people who are so lost and in such pain that they can't imagine anything else. And not just for murder. For justice. For the environment. For education. For positive social change.

It is the silence of good people that hurts our country the most.