Mourning Together

Some losses hit the national bloodstream and leave us reeling. The impact ripples beyond family and friends to anyone who sees their own hopes reflected in that life. We sit with that shock and name what it does to trust, to community, and to our sense of moral ground. Rather than drowning in  numbness, we slow down to ask what faithful, human grief looks like in public.

We talk frankly about the sanctity of life and why no cause, no grievance, and no ideology justifies taking it.  Wrestle with how to hold outrage and compassion at the same time. Drawing on the witness of Gandhi, Martin Luther King Jr., and other voices who refused to answer violence with more violence,  explore a demanding, practical pacifism: solidarity without scapegoats, courage without contempt, and action that honors dignity. The goal isn’t to silence anger; it’s to transform it into care for the vulnerable, support for the bereaved, and commitment to repair.

Along the way, we reflect on the psychology of collective mourning. Why do some of us rush to blame while others go numb? How can communities shape sorrow into rituals that heal—vigils, clear words, generous acts—so grief becomes connective rather than corrosive? We end in prayer, asking for the grace to remember love beneath the pain, to keep the loss human and not symbolic, and to let that memory guide how we live. If your heart feels heavy and you’re searching for a way to stand with others without losing yourself, we offer language, grounding, and hope.

SPIRITUAL DIRECTION WHILE GRIEVING IS AVAILABLE

Art:  https://www.etsy.com/shop/vasonaArts?ref=seller-platform-mcnav
and  https://fineartamerica.com/profiles/candee-lucas

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0F2SFH4Z6

Music and sound effects today by:   via Pixabay

Chapters

• 0:00 Opening And Purpose
• 0:40 Public Death And Collective Shock
• 2:14 Faith, Life, And Moral Boundaries
• 4:14 Pacifism And Historical Voices
• 5:03 The Weight Of Shared Sorrow
• 6:18 What We Grieve And Why
• 8:13 Prayer For Healing And Love
• 10:33 Closing Blessing

Transcript

Candee: 0:17

Welcome to Solace: Soul + Plus Grief. I'm glad you're here. Today's episode might be a little different than usual, but I think it's important that we recognize a public response to public death. We need to recognize the horror, the inhumanity, the loss, the utter loss of a soul so needlessly. Today's episode could be about Rene Good or Alex Pretti. But it needs to be understood that these deaths harm all of us in a different way than the death of an anonymous person. Because these two people stand in for us. Stand in for most of the things most people believe in in this country. Stand in for us in their commitment to others. Stand in for us in the meaning. As if we were all on the road to Emmaus together, seeking Christ.

Candee: 2:00

And so we ask ourselves what to do with this public grief that we share as one as we used to share the evening news. The death of Alex Pretti has turned what we understand about our country and ourselves upside down. No matter what side of the aisle you reside, this death must shock you. I've heard in the days since it happened many different reactions, justifications, blamings, desecration. These are all reactions maybe taken through the lens of our own lives, our own beliefs.

Candee: 3:14

But as God believers, if we are true to our God, we know we know that we have been gifted a life through or by or because of Him. It is not the purview of another person to end that life under any circumstances. This is what we believe, regardless of medieval writings about justified war. I don't believe many people realize how incongruous that phrase is. We can remain safe in our naivete and say sometimes other people must be defended from the aggression of certain other people. Yet we have many instances-- Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Albert Einstein, Bertrand Russell, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, other pacifists through history that would lie naked to that claim.

Candee: 5:02

Mostly our hearts are broken. Our collective hearts are broken. And you can see what power that releases in us. What indignation, what sorrow, and yes, sometimes a sense of helplessness. I talked a few weeks ago about the death of John Kennedy and how it set loose this massive public grief, which seemed so strange at the time. I had no personal relationship with him at all. So what were we grieving? What do we grieve with the deaths of Renee Good and Alex Pretti? We grieve the fact that our world still contains such violence, still contains such hate or disregard, or maybe it's maybe it's hearts that contain nothing at all, have blank spaces where the warmth should be. Blank spots where the hope should be. Blank spots where the love should be.

Candee: 6:45

I don't know. I don't have an answer for this. I don't know. I only know that the public grief is necessary. The public pain is necessary. We cannot begin to heal as a society, as a group of compatriots, as a group of Americans, unless we all learn to grieve this moment, and we grieve it together and we stand together and we support one another in whatever manner. We grieve for their families. We grieve for the very absence of them, and how many people that absence will affect.

Candee: 7:53

And so we go down on our knees and say to our Father, Mother God, help us, help us understand. Follow us in this grief. Support us. Put your arms around us and show us what it means to heal. Show us what it means to love so we remember that. In all of this crashing sadness, we remember what love feels like. We remember that an outpouring of grief is supported by the love underneath. We know that because we've experienced that in our own lives, that the loss of a loved one, that spot, that hole in our hearts never quite heals. It's a place we visit and can visit often. Thank you, God the Father, for making us living, breathing human beings who can recognize and appreciate the lives of our brothers and sisters and grieve deeply when they are violently removed from our presence. When they are simply living their lives, and are ripped out, the threads ripped out of our tapestry, our life tapestries, their part in the weaving never finished.

Candee: 10:33

Amen. Amen.