The current popular sentiment, expressed uniformly as the result of profound sadness, suggests that we live in the Minnesota that we no longer recognize. A hateful young fellow with guns took care of that when he fired wildly through the stained glass windows of Annunciation Catholic Church and in South Minneapolis on a beautiful morning when the Annunciation schoolkids were assembled for their first school Mass of the year.
Bullets flew and glass shattered. Two children were killed, Fletcher Merkel, 8, and Harper Moyski, 10, and many others injured. The shooter killed himself.
It was such an egregious act of evil that it transcended speechlessness and almost instantly compelled a new and useful response, “pray with your feet.” I took it to mean hand-wringing is over. Hoping for the best at the next school Mass is over. Praying with your feet means to move, to advance, to take, literally, steps to make sure innocents are not gunned down in church or school by a madman.
And perhaps a Minnesota we do recognize has responded by a particularly Minnesota curiosity. We all knew the affected, if not personally, then by the parish underground party hotline. It’s not even exclusive to Catholics. It’s just the way things are around here. In the Twin Cities, people are known by the parish they belong to. It’s an uncanny part of initial conversations.
“Where did you grow up?”
“South Minneapolis.”
“Annunciation?”
“Well, it would have been Annunciation, but the dividing line was 50th Street. I was north of 50th, so I went to Visitation.”
Everybody knows somebody who knows somebody who knows somebody whose niece goes to Annunciation. Everybody knows somebody whose uncle went to Annunciation, aunt, grandmother, wife’s best friend’s cousin. The same thing happens in St. Paul, with Nativity, or St. Luke’s (I don’t care what they call it now, I went to St. Luke’s) or St. Agnes or Holy Spirit or St. Casimir’s.
During golf the other day, a guy said, unasked, “my mom and my uncle went to Annunciation. My grandmother on my mom’s side was the church secretary.”
“That was your school?”
“I was north of 50th, went to Visitation.”
Everybody knows those Annunciation kids because all you have to do is look next door, or across the street, or under the roof of the house of a kid you used to have. And there they are, posing for the first-day-of-school picture on the stoop, smiling, brand-new shoes and uniform shirts, one of them pointing at the camera as if to say, “Here I come!”
Every single parishioner in the Twin Cities, in the state, is now enlisted in what we might call the Fletcher Merkel or Harper Moyski security team, praying with their feet. The idea that the government will prevent shootings in the future is preposterous. We don’t need their boilerplate resolutions, or their grandstanding or their empty promises. In fact, get out of our way. This is our problem. Praying with your feet will be the answer. In fact, it is already happening here. Last week at Mass, there were quite a few heads on swivels. That started before Mass and continued until the doors were locked. Another Annunciation cannot happen and people can no longer just hope for the best.
Just days after the sadness at Annunciation, the feeling outside the church of doing something was palpable, not the endless tyranny of hoping somebody else does something. No, we will act. We are alert.
We will pray with our feet.
We owe it to all those kids who point at the camera and say with their bravado and their innocence and grace, “Here we come!”
That can be a Minnesota we’ll be happy to recognize.
Joe Soucheray can be reached at jsoucheray@pioneerpress.com. Soucheray’s “Garage Logic” podcast can be heard at garagelogic.com.
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