Katie’s Column: Heritage

There’s a picture of my dad and a bunch of his family lined up in the pasture for a blue rock turkey shoot.

In case you’ve never witnessed such a thing before, picture the classic basketball game of horse, but replace the court with a field away from civilization and the basketball and hoop with guns and tiny fluorescent disks that get sent flying up into the air. It’s always been a favorite moment of the annual blue rock shoots that dad would have every year in memory of my beloved Uncle Robert. See, Uncle Robert taught all the men in the family to shoot, which is also why the picture is a favorite: they are all standing in the exact same way, holding the rifles the exact same way, and probably hitting the blue rocks with similar impressive accuracy.

I love that picture. It’s heritage. History. The connection rural folks have with their pioneer ancestors. You didn’t initially move to this part of the world if you wanted people interfering much in your life, and you needed a firearm to survive, and that kind of heritage stuff is DNA-level. Some of my best memories of childhood and of my dad revolve around those days in the pasture, laughing and hanging out with people who loved me and whom I loved in return, shooting at tiny clay pigeons flung into the sky by our manual blue rock launcher.

In those moments, dad was in his element. He hated crowds, but family didn’t count as a crowd. Neither my sister nor I ever really got into the gun-shooting part, but we participated for dad, each taking turns with the “girly gun.” Once I accidentally turned to ask a question with the gun in hand, causing the entire hillside of folks in lawn chairs to duck and cover. I caught lots of hell for that. There was no cartridge in the chamber, but folks out there are well trained. Other than me, apparently…

I’ve thought a lot about heritage and my dad over the past year, as you can probably tell from my previous blog posts. It probably has something to do with being back in Nebraska for the first time in my adult life, and how inextricable “home” and “dad” are in my brain. But it’s partly because I’ve wondered about the conversations we might have had this year, given the current political/world realities that we would have, no doubt, somewhat disagreed on.

We did not see eye to eye on a lot of things, which I occasionally feel bad about. He didn’t ask to have a liberal snowflake hippie for a daughter, and he really did nothing to deserve it. He had us out driving trucks and participating in farm life at a young age, like most farmers. It’s probably my fault, having had the gall to spend the majority of my adult life among city folk, the lives of whom rural folk have very little concept of. And vice versa. I’d spend seminary days trying to explain the actions of more rural, conservative folk, and then I’d come home for a holiday and have to try to make those folks understand that city dwelling didn’t mean living in constant fear of bad people taking advantage of me. Trying to explain that the guns that are a beloved part of the heritage of one existence represent gun violence and trauma to the other.. and vice versa.

In between.. that’s me. Understanding both, from both. One reality raised me, the other adulted me, and here I sit, existing somewhere in the middle, trying to explain and have meaningful conversations with both sides, falling inevitably short, searching for some common ground that we can all meet and have a cup of coffee on.

And then tragedy strikes. Again. And collective trauma becomes the reality. Again. (BTW, psychiatrists are saying that our brains are likely not evolved enough to deal with the constant trauma, worry, anger, etc. that we are now dealing with on a regular basis… food for thought)

One of the few times I remember really having a fight with my dad happened in the aftermath of the Sandy Hook attack. He’d posted something on FB about gun control that I found insensitive, and it made me mad because I never knew him to be insensitive, so I posted a meme on Facebook that read something like, “If your first response to school children being massacred is, ‘Oh great, now they’re going to take our guns away,’ then you might be part of the problem.” He was mad and hurt and didn’t speak to me for a few days. I was mad and hurt and I stood by the sentiment (still do) but our standoff led to conversation which led to an uneasy peace which led to neither of us posting anything publicly on gun control ever again.

Because the cool thing about my dad was that he always listened. He always approached our conversations and disagreements from the place of valuing what I had to say, and I gave that back to him in turn. And of all the things I’ve missed about him in the past year, that’s what I’ve missed the most. Talking to dad about things weighing me down inevitably made it better because I knew that even if we wouldn’t ultimately agree, he would actually listen to and hear me, and ultimately value what I had to say.

I guess what I, an in-between person, ultimately want to say is this: guns are an integral part of our national heritage. My heritage, for sure. That heritage, however, is NOT without its pitfalls and perils, and most importantly, that heritage looks completely and entirely different from every single side. Many sides of that heritage are not shiny, pretty ones. They include the tragic horror and devastation like we saw this week in Las Vegas, and to discount that reality in this moment is actually doing a disservice to the people who lost their lives due to the violence. Now is exactly the time to ask tough questions of ourselves, simply because we don’t do it otherwise.

We have to start owning this stuff. Recognize the culpability that we all share in creating a culture where this is a regular occurrence. Recognizing that it’s more complex than we could maybe imagine. And I think it has to start with leading with understanding and a willingness to engage with humans and heritages that are not immediately familiar. And most importantly, advocating for the health, happiness, and wellbeing of complete strangers in the same breath that we advocate for our own. Yes, it can be profoundly uncomfortable to do so, but caring for one another, regardless of heritage, is our calling as the body of Christ.

Hey, no one ever said being a Christian meant being comfortable….