Thank you for this, Avery. I was not in DC, but would’ve wanted to come—especially to something like that impromptu gathering outside KC you’re describing.
>> ‘Many discussed being in spaces where they wanted to talk but felt they would alienate others.’
If I were there and were to say anything, I would probably just apologise for anything that I or any of my friends said or did that made them feel this way. Beyond that, I struggle to find the appropriate language. If I do the throat-clearing (‘even though we don’t agree… nonetheless…’), it feels clinical, cowardly and cruel—do I really need to insert a lengthy Community Note into any displays of my horror at and condemnation of a murder of a young father in front of his family? But retconning my profound, rather existential disagreements to sound as if I was just miffed about tax rates sounds disrespectful too.
Yet regardless of what is or isn’t appropriate to say, you guys are my fellow citizens. Many of you—fellow Christians. I cannot not be sad when you’re hurting. I don’t know what, beyond saying a prayer, I could do to help (well, well, well, now libs are proposing ‘thoughts and prayers’), but let me say that I’m grateful that you are here, that you’ve welcomed me to your country, and that you ‘earnestly seek’ what’s right, even if it takes us to different places. And if Charlie Kirk and I meet, as I hope, where ‘there shall be no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying’, I’ll queue up in front of that tent and spend the whole of eternity trying to convince him that he was completely wrong about most things.
Thank you for this, Avery. I was not in DC, but would’ve wanted to come—especially to something like that impromptu gathering outside KC you’re describing.
>> ‘Many discussed being in spaces where they wanted to talk but felt they would alienate others.’
If I were there and were to say anything, I would probably just apologise for anything that I or any of my friends said or did that made them feel this way. Beyond that, I struggle to find the appropriate language. If I do the throat-clearing (‘even though we don’t agree… nonetheless…’), it feels clinical, cowardly and cruel—do I really need to insert a lengthy Community Note into any displays of my horror at and condemnation of a murder of a young father in front of his family? But retconning my profound, rather existential disagreements to sound as if I was just miffed about tax rates sounds disrespectful too.
Yet regardless of what is or isn’t appropriate to say, you guys are my fellow citizens. Many of you—fellow Christians. I cannot not be sad when you’re hurting. I don’t know what, beyond saying a prayer, I could do to help (well, well, well, now libs are proposing ‘thoughts and prayers’), but let me say that I’m grateful that you are here, that you’ve welcomed me to your country, and that you ‘earnestly seek’ what’s right, even if it takes us to different places. And if Charlie Kirk and I meet, as I hope, where ‘there shall be no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying’, I’ll queue up in front of that tent and spend the whole of eternity trying to convince him that he was completely wrong about most things.