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I'm spending my vacation visiting my best friend in Minnesota, college roommate class of 1979. This is a guy who has gone back with me to South America where I grew up in a terrorist war as a missionary kid. There he went with me to the site where my family and I survived a car bombing. We went out for ice cream but got caught in battle between urban terrorists and police, and one of the terrorists hit our car with a Molotov cocktail bomb. I was nine years old.
Here I arrived on vacation and a policeman shot and killed a man at a traffic stop who was in his car with his girlfriend and her 4 year old child. The child saw him die, like I saw people die when I was a kid. Ouch. Last night my friend and I went to a play, but when we came out protesters had closed the interstate, so it took time to get home. Some protesters clashed with police, and a molotov cocktail was thrown. That triggered me, too.
I'm not taking sides in the politics of the matter. Believe me, I feel the pain here. I'm just venting here because it also triggers me, and ironically on vacation. I'm going to church today at a church directly across the street form the police station, so I'm sure all will come up. Prayers for peace for all sides welcome.
The New York Times sent reporters to the church yesterday and took photos of my hosts and me at prayer during the church service, which was devoted to grappling with the crisis the Castile shooting presents St. Anthony and Minnesota and the USA in general. In the photo, the Mrs. is in the black and white dress, the Mr. is in the blue shirt next to her, and I am next wearing the wrist watch that shows in the picture.
It was, to say the least, a soul searching church service. My hosts' daughter is an ordained minister in Chicago, where I graduated from seminary before I was ordained a minister to be a hospital chaplain. There in Chicago she dates an aide to the Rev. Jesse Jackson and his Rainbow Coalition. He and Rev. Jesse Jackson came to St. Anthony this weekend to comfort the girlfriend of Philando Castile, who was in the car with her four year old child when he was shot and killed. Here is the link to that NY Times article, and I have attached it to this email, too.
http://mobile.nytimes.com/2016/07/11/us/slain-officer-michael-smiths-church-in-dallas-calls-for-healing.html
TW
We often send each other links with news, but this time my link is about being triggered by being in the news. This has been hard for me because you all know I survived and was witness to officer involved gun use growing up in Uruguay. There an officer had me kneel in the street, then held a gun to my head and pulled twice. It jammed the first time, and I wet myself when it jammed yet again because I couldn't believe the miracle could save my life twice like that.
I'm still not taking sides in this traumatic, triggering episode, though. Officer Jeronimo Yanez is known to the people at Nativity Lutheran Church because before this past week on another occasion he answered a 911 call and protected the church when a burglar broke in one night. So as the parish comforts the loved ones of the victim he shot, Philando Castile, and joins in Black Lives Matter protests so these shootings will end across the country, they also know Officer Yanez personally. It's a truly gut wrenching situation to be here on various levels. Prayers very, very welcome!!