By Karen R. Larson

It was the young father that got to me. 

In her October 5 sermon, Pastor Elizabeth told us about a letter circulating among Minnesota clergy, addressed to Governor Walz and members of the Minnesota Legislature and urgently calling for a special session to pass a ban on assault weapons and high-capacity magazines. Our pastors had signed it. So did I, as an ordained minister in the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.). 

So did about 950 other clergy from across the state, at last count.

Many of us then attended daily prayer vigils at the state Capitol at noon. We sang songs like “Lord, listen to your people praying.” We heard scripture—Isaiah 58, Luke 4, the Beatitudes, and the heart-breaking Rachel weeping for her children in Jeremiah 31. We prayed for every representative and senator by name—one-seventh of them each day—for courage and compassion. And we observed 120 seconds of silence, the time it took for a single shooter armed with weapons of war to destroy the lives of so many at a well-secured church school in a quiet Minneapolis neighborhood.

And it was then that the young father got to me. 

This man, parent of an Annunciation student, led the time of silence on Monday, saying a few words first. He spoke with a catch in his throat, reading from a sheet of notebook paper. After thanking those calling for an assault weapons ban, he explained that he was speaking up so that he could tell his children he had not done nothing. Then, he told us that his own father, a man who had seen combat in the Vietnam War, had come home without injury, but now can’t understand how his granddaughter has shrapnel in her leg.

We wept for 120 seconds that day. 

May our legislators be so moved. And may they use their power to protect the children.