Five Days after the Christchurch Shootings: Subversive Compassion

It’s a subversive act to take such a vicious event meant to highlight ‘us’ and ‘them, and then refuse to be vicious. It’s a tough act, to turn our attention away from the perpetrator and refuse to use his name, or dignify his politics with attention to his agenda. Sure, we’ve got a conversation awaiting us about white supremacy and the insidious legacy of racism that colonial white supremacy left us with. That will come.

But in the mean time, all of the usual boundaries are being wonderfully transgressed.

At churches on Sunday we heard, ‘As-salamu alaykum’. At our local LDS meeting the Stake President talked about the Five Pillars of Islam. Māori blessings are being offered on mosques. Gangs alongside police are protecting the sacred spaces of Muslims.