There are sometimes no words to describe the emotions we encounter in life. On Sunday, the world woke up to the news that there had been another mass shooting and this time it had been at a gay club called The Pulse in Orlando, Florida.
When the news of the massacre at The Pulse began to really register in my head and heart I felt emotions that I can’t name. Confusion, fear, loss, empathy, grief and finally love are only words that loosely describe the jumble of emotions I felt when I thought of the 49 people who were killed and the hundreds of lives forever changed by their deaths. The one that has truly lasted in my heart over the last few days is love. I have found that love is the driving force behind my feelings of confusion, loss, empathy and grief.
I love those people I have never met because they are people and all people are deserving of love. Their deaths have affected me extremely deeply because they belonged to or were at the club with someone who comes from the queer community, my community.
Outside of those wonderful people we have lost, I love the man who went into The Pulse and murdered 49 LGBT and allied people. The queer community is one that is still being oppressed by culture and tradition and yet we strive for love within our community and to love those outside of it. I also love the killer. I love this man because that is they only way I know how to combat hatred that is so deep that it leads a man to murdering those who he sees as “sinners,” as “abnormal,” as “pedophiles.” I want to reach into his life and the lives of people like him and show him love in a way he has never seen before, a love that truly comes from God and his love for humanity. Love can have no boundaries and a love without boundaries is the only way that we can reach into someone’s heart and change hatred. Hatred creates boundaries and walls where things and people cannot pass; less they enter into a place where they cannot be loved any longer. So I ask all of us to begin to love without boundaries, to love as God loves us with intention and without condition.
