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I found out last night that the daughter and grandchildren of a friend of ours was in the Tennessee Valley Unitarian Universalist Church in Knoxville during the shootings on Sunday. Thankfully, the daughter and her kids were not injured.
Our friend, who we have known for years (through my m-i-l), is an elderly widow. We discovered a couple of years ago that she is a right-wing, Limbaugh-listening Republican. She, at the same time and to her horror, discovered that we are liberal Democrats. Politically, she tolerates us, and we her. But she sometimes backslides and starts to rail against liberals and the liberal-controlled media (etc.), and I have to remind her with all the charm I can muster that almost all liberals are really just like my wife and me (she loves us!).
I have not yet talked to our friend, so I know no more than that. Are they (her daughter and other family) members of this Unitarian Church, or just visiting? I do not know. Either way, it perhaps shows a thirst for tolerance, social justice, and the other "liberal values" often associated with the Unitarians.
The $64K question now is: Will our friend (the near-victims' mom and grand-mom) have a change of heart? Can she grasp the near certainty that a liberal-hating right-winger (and most probably a fellow Limbaugh listener) came very close to dispatching her precious family members to eternity? Or will she blame the whole tragedy on the likes of my wife and me .. the liberals?
My guess is that this church shooting rampage will have been our friend's moral and social epiphany. I'm betting on a change of heart that will allow her to see the many pitfalls of the path she has been treading. I'm hoping for a scintilla of good to come from this violent act by a hate-filled coward.
I wait with trembling hands and bated breath.
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