I was quite moved last night by the memorial service in Tucson, AZ, for all the victims — dead and surviving — of last Saturday’s awful mass shooting. It was very “Tucson,” very Southwest. Held in the the McKale fieldhouse of the University of Arizona, it began with the University Symphonic Orchestra playing Aaron Copland’s “Fanfare for the Common Man” followed by a Native American blessing, paying tribute to the cultural and historical complexity and diversity of this “big small town” in the American Southwest. An earnest music major sang the “Star Spangled Banner,” and people sang along, hands over their hearts.
The university had put “Together We Thrive” t-shirts on all 14,000 seats. Daniel Hernandez Jr., the intern to Rep. Gabrielle Giffords who probably saved her life by his emergency first aid, said it first: “e pluribus unum” — “out of many, one” – “on Saturday we all became Americans.” He received four standing ovations during his brief, self-deprecating remarks. No wonder Obama looked over his own upcoming speech notes for a moment after Gonzalez was done! It was going to be a hard act to follow.
It was a familiar event in many ways — a memorial to remember those who died and to celebrate the lives they had taken from them. Anyone who thought there wasn’t appropriate opportunity for expressions of grief didn’t pay attention to the family of Christina Taylor Green, the 9-year old victim of the shootings, as they held onto each other and alternately wept or applauded, or Michelle Obama, who hardly stopped crying the whole evening.
And yet it wasn’t a traditional religious service. The blessing by Carlos Gonzalez set it in a religious and cultural context unfamiliar to most Americans, but obviously not to the 14,000 Arizonans gathered together last night. The Jewish prophet Isaiah’s great words, “comfort, o comfort my people,” were read by Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano; St. Paul’s admonitions to the church in Corinth was read by the Attorney General of the United States, Eric Holder. How times have changed when these are the lectors; how things remain the same in the words they read.
What set it apart most distinctively, however, was the gathered audience, which was an extension of the ubiquitous crowds that have grown across Tucson all week — ordinary Arizonans seeking a way both to be consoled, and to reaffirm the goodness of who they are — who we all are — as a tribute to six beautiful lives senselessly and so violently snatched away.
Barack Obama took his cues, I think, from a long line of African American funeral oration. His 30-minute eulogy was both intensely personal and publicly inspirational, calling on us all to make sure the nation we live in and continue to shape is one worthy of the dreams and expectations of our children.
“We cannot use this tragedy as one more occasion to turn on each other,” Obama said.
And yet before it was over the conservative blogosphere was abuzz with condemnations of the style of the event, the political correctness of the opening blessing, the slogan on the t-shirts, the “pep rally” disrespect for the dead, the stump speech tone of the President, the lack of expected long-faced solemnity. My heart sank just skipping around through the detritus on the morning’s internet postings. I’m not providing links to any of them here.
I’m not sure any President could change the minds of people who were not moved and appreciative of the authenticity and sincerity and appropriateness of this truly “American” event — as if for just a while the past generation of ramped up divisiveness and disrespect and downright viciousness just hadn’t happened. It was American, but maybe only to those of us who can viscerally recall another America in another time.
The crowd last night in Tucson surely didn’t rush home to see the “judges” on the news shows hold up their scorecards like ice-skating officials at long ago Olympic games (I turned off CNN at that point!). This was not an “us vs. them” event, but an experience of community, of solidarity, of “we the people” gathered to remember what is best about us and to grieve the loss of those we care so deeply about. I was proud to be a virtual part of it, thousands of miles away in the comfort of my living room in snow covered Washington, DC. I cried. Once I actually applauded … for Daniel Hernandez.
I suspect that this curious combination of sadness and celebration is something we will have to come to terms with as a new feature on our cultural landscape. For me as a Christian, it is the sort of realistic hope that is at the heart of the prophets, the Jesus of the Gospels, and the best of the church from early martyrs to late.
No speech can fix all that is broken in the world; but it can give those of us who want to take a different – a blessing – way, the chance to search our hearts and choose a more reconciling and healing vision within which to frame our lives.

We’re at a tipping point. You can just sense the cultural and social vertigo.


