Honor Oneself

On Charlie Kirk and the loss of humanity

I, like everyone else, have been sitting with a distant heartbreak. I have felt unbelief and shock, disgust and desolation. I have wondered at humanity, the lack of it and the twisting of it. I have seen a video I cannot unsee, cannot un-remember. I have seen the responses, the Youtube videos and Instagram posts and all the beautiful words of remembrance. What I have seen the very most? Love. I have seen so many pour out love for a man who wanted goodness in the world. I have seen post after post, words upon words, of admiration and love. Heartbreak and confusion, yes. But hate? I have seen this only from one side of a deeply rutted trench. A trench or a wall - either way it’s dividing.

There are people celebrating the death of a husband, a father, a truthteller and seeker. They are praising a bullet that ended the life of a man who believed in God and goodness, in family and freedom and the United States. These are not bad things, not ideals of an evil man.

I heard comparisons to a slew of other deaths: the sidewalk slaying of Brian Thompson, the Minnesota legislators gunned down in their own homes. I do not agree with these shootings. I do not agree with the assassination attempts on Trump. I do not, in generalities, agree with taking a human’s life at your own will. I can, however, concede understanding. These were, are, people in power. People who have, in some minds, hurt others. A CEO of an insurance company who had a hand in suffering and even death. I’ll concede that. Legislators who have their fingers in laws, budgets, and policies that affect everyone. I’ll concede that. Even Trump, one could see his agendas and intentions as dangerous for themselves, and wrongly or rightly, I’ll concede that.

But Charlie Kirk? He did nothing to anyone. He spoke words. Beautiful words. Honest words. Were his words sometimes harsh? Perhaps. Uncomfortable? Absolutely. Difficult to hear? Yes. Divisive? You bet. But they were words. They did not insight violence.

I want to talk more about words, about free speech. About where the lines are, and who draws them in sand and cement. Where do words turn into actions and who’s to blame if they do – but that’s for another day.

(I encourage anyone interested in learning what Charlie said that has often been twisted to mean something else, taken out of context, or generally misunderstood, to check out this video. And! Go watch Charlie for yourself. Watch him debate with grace and confidence people from every single walk of life. You can absolutely disagree with him, with his opinions, his viewpoints, his beliefs (I have, I do), but please don’t believe falsehoods about his words.)

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I have spent the last few weeks sitting with this. I began writing this the morning after Charlie Kirk was murdered. I wrote it swimming in a grief I didn’t fully understand. I wrote it in moments I couldn’t think of much else, soaked in the mess of internet opinions and hatred. And then I stopped, I took steps away, I decided to focus on me and mine for a moment. I hugged my son extra hard, explaining that the little things aren’t, maybe, so important – a stuck drill bit, a change in plans. I kissed my husband and told him how much I appreciate him. I tried to fill my ears and brain with goodness. Found podcasts that lit up my soul, instead of making me question humanity.

I breathed. A lot, and deeply.

And now, today, I feel differently in some ways, and more convicted in others.

Let me explain.

The world is terribly broken. I don’t pretend to know everything, but I know plenty enough to realize that the darkness in the world is more insidious and pervasive, much more evil than most people know. It is easy, once you began the walk down the dark path of the big truths, to fall into all the darkness yourself. To let the evils consume you, envelop and encase you until you are actually affected by it all. I don’t think that is what we all need to do. Some of us, some less empathetic, more able to catalogue and shelve internally, need to do this for the greatest good of truth. Some of us, my hand raised, aren’t meant for that. I don’t feel called to root out evils or expose lies or scream into the ether. My calling? My calling has always been smaller and quieter. To affect my tiny circle of influence. To mother well and wife well, to tend my bit of soil and the hearts that choose to love me. I have, admittedly, gotten a little lost in the bigger world, when sometimes I need to come back down and remember my calling. My place, my meaning, what I believe my purpose on earth is.

I unfriended someone on Facebook. Not even a friend, someone I once knew and never bothered unfriending before. She wasn’t being horrible, but she was incredibly misguided in what she was sharing. I pressed comment and let my cursor blink. And then I unfriended. My job isn’t to change minds, to argue, to take a public stand like that. That doesn’t mean others shouldn’t, and I pray they will now more than ever. But my place? My place is and has always been in the pouring of goodness. I don’t fight wrong with more wrong, with loud voices and bitter words. I never was that person, but when faced with so much anger thrown, it’s often easiest to throw it back.

I became, quite by almost-accident, entrenched in a political debate in the comment section of our own YouTube video. A video about the protests, the strikes and road blockades happening in Ecuador right now. A video, at its core, just informing people who might live here or want to visit soon. It became, predictably, political. I debated and argued, in all the kindest ways I know how, with people who have very different world views than I. I let it absorb me, consume my thoughts. Then, I stepped away. Not because I am not convicted, not for lack of interest or knowledge, not because I don’t care, but because sometimes the biggest differences are made closest to home. So, I’ll wash the dishes and put my hands in soil and pet my goats.

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It’s all so complicated. Religion is complicated. Spirituality is complicated. Church is extra complicated. Politics in beyond complicated. Do you know what isn’t, shouldn’t be, complicated? Morality. Humanity. We used to, by and large, know what was right. What was moral. Outliers notwithstanding, humanity was more or less moral. At least, in the United States. And even in remote tribes, they are moral even if their flavor of morality is vaguely different. Morality and humanity, side by side, ought not to be such a trial. Such a hardship.

Have we, as humans, just lost morality? Common sense and dignity? It doesn’t matter what side of anything you are on. If you are Buddhist, Christian, Agnostic, or Wiccan, you can still see how wrong the slaughter of a morally good man is. No one should disagree with this simple fact. And yet our timelines and newsfeeds and for you pages are filled with so much vitriol it’s staggering.

Many people have been feeling called, in the wake of this loss, to speak louder, to share more boldly in their truth seeking. I have felt called to speak softer. For my softness, my gentle heart, my optimism and patience and kindness are all traits I have let erode with the digging for truths. I don’t believe my best self is the self that sees the worst in the world. I don’t believe I show up as the best woman, best mother, best wife, when I entrench myself in politics and evils and truths masquerading as conspiracies. The best me is the me who I forgot how to be.

That is what I take from this loss, from the way the world responded to the loss. This is what I take away from a man who believed in family and love and God and above all else, people. I think there is no better way to honor Charlie Kirk than by honoring ourselves.