In the wake of another mass shooting, my news feed was filled with people offering solutions and some other people offering hate. I wondered why it takes a mass shooting, not the shooting of one or two anymore to break through our denial.  How many lives have to be cut short before we as a nation get interested, hold vigils, mourn together?

I listened to Stephen Colbert suggest we just love each other.  Jimmy Fallon wants us to keep dancing.  All great advice in my book. Christians wonder what would Jesus do? Some act more like the Pharisees, forgetting about the Samaritan lying in the road. I personally don’t dance, I don’t love too many people, and Jesus was perfect, so I find myself looking for some way through the anger and hate.  How can I see my neighbor as my self? How can I find the common ground when the differences are so glaring? I try to follow the example of Jesus but with His pure heart and a direct line to His Father, surely it was easier for Him. He didn’t stand on His pulpit of perfection though, He ministered to the brokenness in each person He encountered.  Maybe that is my answer.

I have long acknowledged my own broken pieces, too many to hide. I publicly share in the “Joys and Concerns” segment at church weekly.  Members of the congregation often approach me later to thank me for the courage to share.  I want to ask them what holds them back but I already know.  Even in church people hide their brokenness.  Is it any wonder we can’t love others when we don’t love ourselves? Accepting our own failings, no longer pretending to be perfect, I believe, would allow us to see into those places of hurt and need in others.  All the others.  Even the ones we don’t like.  Expanding our group to include more broken people, pieces missing, might just help heal our own wounds.

Maybe it won’t stop all of the violence, maybe shootings will continue. But what if we started a revolution of broken people accepting more broken people? We might just find love and Jesus and dancing.