[Magdalen] Please Pray - Shooting in Charleston, SC church

[Georgia DuBose]

This latest horrific shooting, this one in Charleston, South Carolina,
is beyond...I don't know what the word is. As a priest who has served
an historically Black church in West Virginia as a licensed lay
reader, deacon and priest, as a person with many Black friends, as
someone who loves her country so much, but, of late, barely recognizes
it--I am devastated. I have heard people who have diminished the
killing of young Black men by saying that they were "thugs," who were
"a...sking for it," etc.
So tell me how the pastors, the state senator, the noted librarian,
the church janitor, the beloved coach, etc....tell me how those people
were asking for it. I am trying to imagine what horror must have
seized them before they were killed. I am trying to imagine what it
would have been like if the same thing had happened in Charles Town,
West Virginia as clergy and vestry (lay governing body) at St.
Philip's Episcopal Church sat in prayer before beginning their
meeting. Would the killer have skipped me because I am White? Or would
he have shot me because I was among followers of Jesus Christ whose
skin was different from mine?

How long, O Lord, how long?

Georgia+