Heaven or hell? It's our choice
Linda Kraeger (1947-2008) taught me that it's our job is to create heaven on earth.
Today is the 15th anniversary of an event that changed my life and the lives of many others. It’s the day a man entered Tennessee Valley Unitarian Universalist Church during a Sunday morning worship service, took out a sawed-off shotgun from a guitar case, and opened fire. In my professional role working for the Unitarian Universalist Association, it was my job to respond to the shooting to help coordinate trauma response, media, fundraising, and myriad other things that needed attention.
Mindful of this anniversary, today’s piece is different from the others I’ve shared in my Accidental Mentors series. I didn’t write it for that. A longer version called “The Faces of Hell” was published in The Other Journal in 2012. However, despite its length, I decided to share it with you because Linda, a woman I never met, who was one of the victims of the shooting, kept coming to mind as I reflected on the women I wanted to write about.
After reading it, I hope you’ll understand why I felt called to include Linda in this project.
They asked me to show them where it happened. Would I take them there, the older woman asked, her voice low and halting. The two women introduced themselves as Linda's sisters, but I didn't catch their names. I nodded and asked them to follow me. We walked the same path the shooter had taken the day before, through the lobby, down the short hallway, past the nursery where a woman had blocked the door with her body to prevent the shooter from getting to her baby, and then through the sanctuary doors.
I stopped where he had stopped, the man with the shotgun hell-bent on killing, and motioned for them to go past me. "Your sister was right over there," I said, pointing to the approximate location where their sister had been sitting, "There were pews there but they’ve been removed.” Their deep, guttural sighs were audible as they moved into the room.
"He stood here," I said, moving my hands to show I meant the place I was standing. "All his shots were on this side of the sanctuary," I went on, motioning to the right side of the room. The two women stood silently as they took in the place where their sister had been struck down. After a few minutes, one of them looked at me and asked, "Do you think she’s in hell?"
I started, as if the shotgun blasts were still echoing off the sanctuary walls. She must mean the shooter, right? But no, I was sure I’d heard her correctly. My wide eyes betrayed the anxiety I felt, which I attempted to cloak with a calm, steady tone as I asked, "Can you tell me why might you think that?"
The woman answered, her face drawn, tears held back only by sheer force of will. "She was an agnostic. She didn't accept Jesus as her savior. I'm afraid she went to hell."
I tried to imagine the unbearable internal conflict inherent in her question and took a deep breath before responding. "I didn't know your sister," I said slowly, carefully, "but I have heard a lot about her since it happened. I know she was a giving and loving person. She cared deeply for her family and for those around her. She struggled with questions of faith as many of us do, but I can't imagine a God who would condemn her for that. She was a good woman. I hope you can come to believe that too."
She held my gaze, sizing me up as if she were trying desperately to see in me someone she could believe. She lowered her head, shaking it slowly, "I don't know," she said, her eyes scanning the floor. "I don't know," she repeated, her voice trailing into a whisper.
We stood in silence for a few more minutes before the two women looked at each other, nodded in agreement that they were ready to go, and headed to the door. "Thank you for your time," the other woman said as they passed by me.
As I watched them shuffle to their car, I prayed they would find the strength to move on, to heal from the wounds inflicted by the shooter as deeply as any of his gunshots.
My legs shaking, I grabbed the door’s metal bar to steady myself, a stillness settling over me as I imagined the scene twenty-four hours earlier. It was a typical, sultry midsummer day in Knoxville, Tennessee but an atypical Sunday morning at the Tennessee Valley Unitarian Universalist Church. The church, usually sparsely attended in the summer, was filled with regular members and an unusual number of guests for a special production of Annie, Jr, a mini version of the light-hearted Broadway hit musical about a feisty, little orphan girl who wins over everyone's hearts.
But one visitor wasn't there to see the play. This man parked his truck in the church's crowded parking lot, retrieved a guitar case from the cab, left what some have referred to as a manifesto on the seat, and closed the door. There are reports he first tried to enter the sanctuary through a side door, one that would have brought him into the front of the sanctuary. If he had been allowed to enter through that door, he would have been facing the crowd gathered there. But the man was stopped at that door by a volunteer stage manager who wasn't letting anyone disrupt the performance. "You must go around to the main entrance," she insisted. And, surprisingly, considering what he had planned, he did.
The next report of him was from a little boy who recalled seeing him in the men's room near the children's religious education wing. No one knows what he did in there, whether he was making final preparations or just deepening his resolve to do what he felt he compelled to do. When he left the men's room, he proceeded down that same hallway I had just walked and stood next to the glass-enclosed, soundproof nursery.
One witness later said he thought the man was part of the morning's musical production. After all, he didn't stand out from other churchgoers. A white man in his mid-fifties, wearing jeans and a casual shirt, and carrying a guitar case was a typical sight on Sunday morning at this liberal congregation.
But on this occasion, the man laid down his guitar case, opened the latches, pulled out a 12-gauge Remington shotgun, raised it to his shoulder, and pulled the trigger.
Some witnesses reported thinking the loud noise was part of the play. Others thought that something had gone wrong with the sound system. Still others were sure it was a bomb. Greg McKendry, a gentle giant of a man maintaining his post as usher near the sanctuary door, turned to the noise and received the brunt of an entire shot, all 250 pellets contained in one shell, in his side, back, and abdomen. He collapsed immediately.
By the time this shot rang out and as more blood spattered around the room, the gravity of what was happening began to sink in and people rushed to hide under the pews or escape through one of the exits from the sanctuary. When the shooter lowered his gun to reload, the church member who’d been waiting to make his entrance as Daddy Warbucks tackled him. Several others joined him, wrestling the shooter to the ground, freeing the gun from his grip, and pinning his arms behind his back. When the police arrived only moments later, they turned him over to police custody.
By the time it was all over, Greg McKendry, lay dead, and Linda Kraeger, an author, scholar, and retired professor who had come to watch one of her granddaughters in the play, would die at the hospital. Seven more people, including Linda’s husband, were seriously wounded, and still others had various minor injuries. The shooter was still alive. His arm was broken from the force with which he was restrained, but he was otherwise unhurt.
We later learned from the note he left on the seat of truck that he had intended to keep shooting until the police killed him. He had 76 shells with him and was just reloading for the first time when he was taken down. If anyone was in hell, I thought, it was those church members and friends who experienced the terror of that day. That was my definition of hell.
I sighed, eased my grip on the door handle, and headed back to the church's administrative offices where the other trauma responders were gathered. I was clear about one thing, this event would test our faith as nothing else had ever done. Could we forgive like the Amish had done after the school shooting in Nickel Mines, Pennsylvania in which five of their children had been massacred and five others wounded by a lone gunman? Would we respond by closing our doors, becoming wary of strangers, and condemning this man for the evil he had perpetrated against us? Or would we stay true to our religious heritage that calls us to affirm and promote the inherent worth and dignity of every person? I didn't have to wait long for my answer.
By early afternoon, we scheduled a press conference to mollify the crowds of media people who had gathered on the church's front lawn. It was decided by the team of local, regional, and national leaders who had assembled to support the congregation, that the church's president, Ted Jones, and the Reverend William Sinkford, our denomination's national leader, would speak to the media. The statements they made and the answers they gave spoke of the church's long-standing commitment to welcoming everyone no matter who they are. They emphasized that this commitment wasn't going to change because of the actions of one individual. Love is the spirit of this church, they said, and that spirit would not be defeated by anyone or anything.
At the interfaith vigil held later that evening, the question about going to hell came up again. This time, however, unlike the question from Linda’s sisters, this question was about the shooter himself. In his homily to the thousand or so people crowded into the sanctuary of the neighboring Presbyterian church, Rev. Sinkford said he was asked by a reporter earlier that day if the shooter was going to hell for what he had done. At that instant, an almost imperceptible chuckle rose from around the room. It lasted only a second before it was absorbed by the uncomfortable shuffling of those who jerked their heads around to see where this jarring sound was coming from.
Although impossible to settle on a single source, it was unmistakable. For what was probably the first time in thirty-three hours since the shooting, Unitarian Universalists laughed. They laughed, not out of irreverence, not out of stress, not out of disrespect. They laughed at the incredulity of this question, a question that struck at the very core of their beliefs. In his response, Sinkford articulated what those who laughed already knew, that no matter what the shooter did or why he did it, there was no greater hell than the one he was living in here on earth. He was already in a hell burning with his hatred, anger, inability to see love where it existed. Hell only exists in the absence of love.
As I listened to his remarks, I recalled the tormented grief of Linda’s sisters, their inability to reconcile her life with what they believed. They obviously loved their sister deeply, but love wasn’t enough to keep their hell at bay. It is only when love is combined with faith, faith that all people are inherently good, that hell loses its foothold in this world.
In her tragic death, Linda illuminated that precept of my faith more clearly than anyone in my life had. Hell is not a place looming after death—it’s here with us now, and it’s our job to turn this existence into a place where hell does not exist for anyone—to create heaven on earth. I pray Linda’s sisters come to accept that.
I wish I had had a chance to get to know Linda in her lifetime, but I’m forever grateful for the deepened understanding of my faith she gave me in her passing.
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Damn. So. Well. Written.
Very well expressed, especially the concept of hell.