Gathering Monday evening in shock and sorrow at the massacres in El Paso, Texas, and Dayton, Ohio, the latest in the ongoing and apparently unstoppable series of mass murders by American madmen with machine guns, more than 100 souls shared a candlelight vigil outside the Dallas County Courthouse, a ceremony for all victims of gun violence.
The Rev. Julie Higgs, pastor of the Grace Lutheran Church in Adel, opened the memorial vigil with an invocation.
“Come among us, O God,” Higgs prayed. “Unite us is our condemnation of these acts of violence. Guide us as we seek to turn the tide on violence. Help us not to turn on one another but to turn toward one another, trusting that every one of us wants to feel safe, yearns for an end to this violence and seeks the best for all.”
Brief remarks of encouragement and uplift were also offered by the Rev. Doug Pfeiffer, pastor of the First Christian Church in Adel, and the Rev. Pat Stalter, pastor of the Woodward Christian Church.
Candles were distributed among the people and lit in a ceremony of unity, followed by a symbolic release of four balloons, three white and one teal, performed by Dan Miller, a member of the Adel City Council, and Bryce Smith, owner of the Adel Family Fun Center.
Among the public officials present at the vigil were Dallas County Sheriff Chad Leonard, Adel Mayor Jim Peters and Adel Police Department Sgt. Natalie Gillett. Representatives of Everytown for Gun Safety and Moms Demand Action provided information on gun violence.
Don Graeve of Adel was among about 110 people attending the vigil. He said he attended the event in spite of a worry that an American madman with a machine gun might even attack the Adel event.
Addressing the latest slaughters, U.S. President Donald Trump read prepared remarks Monday from the White House.
“In one voice, our nation must condemn racism, bigtory and white supremacy,” Trump said. “These sinister ideologies must be defeated. Hate has no place in America. Hatred warps the mind, ravages the heart and devours the soul.”
Former U.S. President Barack Obama also issued a statement Monday on Twitter.
“We should soundly reject language coming out of the mouths of any of our leaders that feeds a climate of fear and hatred or normalises racist sentiments,” Obama said, “leaders who demonise those who don’t look like us, or suggest that other people, including immigrants, threaten our way of life, or refer to other people as sub-human, or imply that America belongs to just one certain type of people.”
Obama said the language of hatred “has no place in our politics and our public life. And it’s time for the overwhelming majority of Americans of goodwill, of every race and faith and political party, to say as much — clearly and unequivocally.”
In her prayer at the courthouse, Higgs said we come before God with many emotions, with some of us “shocked and in pain at the numbers of people who have lost their lives just in this year, many of us angry that it keeps happening again and again, some of us terrified that it will happen in our community, some of us motivated to act for change, some of us paralyzed by our lack of knowledge about how to fix such a big problem, some of us angry that the changes we’ve worked for haven’t happened, some of us frightened by the implications of what others propose to do, but all of us grieving for the victims and their families, many of us also grieving the illness of the shooters, for the pain that their families now face, some of us believing we know who to blame, others of us searching for someone to blame, some of us feeling guilty about what we haven’t done, others perhaps feeling guilty about how we ourselves have fed the hatred and division, all of us gathering together because we care, we ache, we want things to be different.”
