{"id":18667,"date":"2018-11-08T16:17:56","date_gmt":"2018-11-09T00:17:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.pnwumc.org\/news\/?p=18667"},"modified":"2018-11-08T16:18:55","modified_gmt":"2018-11-09T00:18:55","slug":"thousand-oaks","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.pnwumc.org\/news\/thousand-oaks\/","title":{"rendered":"Thousand Oaks"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Rev. Wes Stanton<\/strong><\/h4>\n

Another week, another mass killing.<\/p>\n

It hasn\u2019t always been this way.<\/p>\n

It doesn\u2019t have to be this way.<\/p>\n

Not only are there more mass murders, including mass murders by firearm, in the U.S. than any other developed nation, but the rate of such violence has seen a drastic rise in the past decade.<\/p>\n

There are multiple \u201ccauses\u201d \u2014 lots of links in the chain. It\u2019s not just high-capacity and high-speed firearms. It\u2019s not just the firearms industry lobby. It\u2019s not just toxic masculinity. It\u2019s not just mental illness. It\u2019s not just military experience, PTSD, or moral injury. It\u2019s not just that people need Jesus (the U.S. has more Christians, as a percentage of population, than just about any other country \u2013 heck, we\u2019re the birthplace of evangelicalism! \u2013 and it has far the highest level of deadly violence in the developed world). It\u2019s not just political extremism. It\u2019s certainly not just that there\u2019s a ten-year shortage of \u201cgood guys with guns.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
Rev. Wes Stanton<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

What it feels<\/strong> <\/em>like to me: the difference in the past decade is a generally elevated societal stress level, that makes our small problems bigger, peels away our abilities to cope, puts each of us closer to the edge of some extreme method of coping or responding, and more of us fall over that edge than before \u2014 into violence, or self-harm, or self-isolation, or cynicism, or extremism, or several of the above. I\u2019m sure the sociologists or public health folks have a technical term for generalized societal stress levels, and can measure it and find a graph to prove or disprove the correlation that I\u2019m feeling. But what I feel is that people (me included) are more stressed-out, to the point of dysfunction, than before. It\u2019s doing damage, not only when folks commit violence, but also in day-to-day living, as we \u201czone out\u201d at work and can\u2019t live up to our vocation, as we escalate irritation into rudeness, or nervousness into fearful isolation.<\/p>\n

We\u2019re not all equally overwhelmed, though. Some of us have healthy networks of caring community. Some of us have spiritual practices that help. Some of us have been taught that seeking assistance is honorable, and not a failure of masculine virtue or warrior integrity (the military encourages seeking help now, in ways they didn\u2019t, back in the day). Some of us have not lived through the trauma of war, or the trauma of coming of age in the 90s or 00s. Some of us are cushioned by privilege and economic security. Some of us are cushioned by functional family systems.<\/p>\n

It hasn\u2019t always been this way.<\/p>\n

It doesn\u2019t have to be this way.<\/p>\n

So what will you do? What will you do, not only to help yourself to live further from the edge of violence and isolation, but to transform your web of acquaintances, your neighborhood, your community?<\/p>\n

How will you strengthen your existing groups \u2013 civic groups, faith groups, workplaces \u2014 to be welcoming, caring communities?<\/p>\n

How will you practice your spiritual practice with gentle constancy, and encourage others to grow in their own spiritual practice (without being \u201cjudgy\u201d or \u201cholier-than-thou\u201d)?<\/p>\n

How will you seek appropriate help when you need it, and\u00a0<\/strong><\/em>encourage others to seek it, both by your example and your testimony?<\/p>\n

You\u2019ll notice I\u2019m not talking here about a more rational firearms law. I think there\u2019s a place for that, but just as there\u2019s not a single cause, so there\u2019s not a single remedy. We can work for a transformed society today and every day, in all our interactions.<\/p>\n

It hasn\u2019t always been this way.<\/p>\n

It doesn\u2019t have to be this way.<\/p>\n

\n

Wes Stanton<\/strong> is an elder in the Pacific Northwest Annual Conference serving as pastor to the people of Trinity United Methodist Church in Ritzville, Washington.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

“So what will you do?” asks the Rev. Wes Stanton in the wake of another mass shooting. “What will you do, not only to help yourself to live further from the edge of violence and isolation, but to transform your web of acquaintances, your neighborhood, your community?” <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":51,"featured_media":18668,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[113],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-18667","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-opinioneditorial"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.pnwumc.org\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/11\/Shootings-NBC-News.png?fit=656%2C656&ssl=1","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2l75j-4R5","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pnwumc.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18667","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pnwumc.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pnwumc.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pnwumc.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/51"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pnwumc.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18667"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.pnwumc.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18667\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18673,"href":"https:\/\/www.pnwumc.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18667\/revisions\/18673"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pnwumc.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/18668"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pnwumc.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18667"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pnwumc.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18667"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pnwumc.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18667"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}