When People Stop Talking

I hear a lot of people complaining about their sleep. A Facebook post. A voicemail. I don't know what to make of it. I had a little trouble myself getting to sleep last night. I know that tonight I have started writing too late and I can't stay up too late or I won't be able to get to sleep tonight. Usually, I can sleep just fine. Tonight, I watched the video of the City Council meeting. A lot of people hurting, feeling like they're not being heard. I had to go read a couple of news reports, watch a video from an officer's body cam. It's a tragedy what happened, not sure exactly what will the final outcome be. I will not say more about it because I do not know the whole story. I just know the family is hurting. They want accountability. Not sure in what form that might be. Their loved one was killed by police. All those incidents are more complicated than people want to try to unravel. Everybody has their interpretation. The deceased person was out of control, mental issues, the family says. The situation started in a house, proceeded to a convenience store. From the footage, it looks like it was many events piling up that could have been handled differently, but who am I to say how I would have handled it if I were law enforcement in that situation. I always used to jump to the conclusion that the officers could have done something other than kill the person, but when you see how violent the whole situation was, involving a police chase, a guy running around with a knife, and the whole thing started when someone called the police, in other words a domestic violence situation, and then the guy kept not submitting to the officers. I am not going to judge anyone in this situation because it's the first time I had heard about it and it is heartbreaking. The city does need to do something about mental illness and homelessness and poverty and everything else, but there is not a single solution. What there is, is the realization that people need to be listened to and people need to be responded to, and given the message that they matter, doesn't matter what color they are. That gets complicated for some reason. What I learned in graduate school is what is real to people is how they perceive it, not, essentially, what happened, if that makes sense. There's a fancy name for that, and I can't think of it right now, but I am going to conclude this because the whole thing in a nutshell is this: People need to listen and people need to be listened to. And that is what Charlie Kirk knew. He said, "When people stop talking, that's when you get violence." And truer words were never spoken. I pray that this family is able to heal, and I pray that people will not stop talking, and I pray that communities can come together and violence will not have the preeminence in public life, and I pray these things in the name of the Prince of Peace, Jesus Christ. Amen. And may everybody get a good night's sleep tonight.