DOES ANYONE ELSE FEEL STUCK on a timeline that is too confounding for words? Everything around me feels shoved into reverse as it stutters forward. Can a crab walk in two directions at the same time? Because it seems like anything can happen, especially if it makes no sense. And what does it signify when the people you’ve always known best are people you feel you don’t know at all? Is it only me? I doubt it. And that feels like the point. I need to slow down, start somewhere, so, because I’m the center of my own universe, let me start with Sunday morning, Sept. 28, 2025. I know what happened then. Not really. Oh, and it might be important to know (if you didn’t already) that I’m a Latter-day Saint. A Mormon. (Can I say that again?) Or it might not matter at all.

So here it is. On Sunday morning, a 40 year old man – a veteran who decorates his pick up truck with US flags and his home with a Trump sign – plowed into a Stake Center of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and then rained terror in the form of gunfire and improvised explosive devises on a congregation that included scores of children. He killed four people and wounded eight. To his mind, each victim, whether killed, wounded or traumatized, is or was, an “antiChrist” (his word), a Mormon, someone like me. The word he used – “antiChrist” – is decidedly Christian, but the actions he committed are not. 

About two weeks before this Michigan church massacre, a Christian pundit is assassinated on a college campus in Utah, and the state rallies to find the killer. Online fights break out about whether the assassin is MAGA or a radical leftist, whether the pundit was an emissary of Jesus or a villainous racist. No consensus can be reached. As it turns out, people are complex. Facts are fluid. But funerals go on. The victim is eulogized. His wife forgives the murderer as part of her practice of unconditional love. The president stands beside her and proclaims his unconditional hatred for Americans who aren’t aligned with him ideologically, attempting to stain half the country with blood they didn’t shed. Out, out, damn spot! So, is this death of a man the death of freedom of speech? No one wants that. Not even Disney or Jimmy Kimmel. So many prayers flying heavenward – for the family, the students, for the country and the American church. Utah’s governor even prayed the quiet part out loud: don’t let the killer “be one of us.” But he was. He was an American. That’s what the governor meant, right?

Meanwhile, something else big in the LDS world had just happened the night before and I don’t mean BYU winning a football game. Russell M. Nelson, the president of the LDS church, passed away. Date: Saturday night, Sept 27, He was 101. Many LDS learned of the shooting before they heard of the passing of their prophet, a turning point that is as impactful to Latter-day Saints as the passing of a pope is to Catholics. Because Pres. Nelson had passed mile marker 101, no one was surprised. Obituaries should’ve been at the ready. 

But I, for one, was surprised that the passing of a man who led the worldwide LDS church for nearly 8 years and had been part of its upper leadership for over 40 years wasn’t acknowledged on any national news broadcasts that I could find. After all, people had been massacred in a church – in his Church. His death became the boring side dish to what is, for the media, a gourmet meal of violence. 

Some outlets called the victims “Christian,” and Mormons throughout the land felt a pinch of gratitude fall into what we’d been served up, a troubled stew of emotions, because yes, we know. We know what outsiders think of us, what some think of us, what some would kill us for, have killed us for. It’s why we ran into the woods in the 19th century and escaped the United States in wagon trains and handcart companies. Is this the same reason other Christians are killed? For not being the right kind? Is this the reason religionists kill? The reason all killers kill?

So, okay, sure. Fine. National broadcasters didn’t notice that Pres. Nelson had passed right away. But its a good thing they noticed the day (Sept. 16) that Robert Redford (89) left us. We all knew quickly and we all cared. Redford was everyone’s right kind. The next question is, did we notice what happened the next day, on Sept. 17? That day two men – one, a black, male college student and the other, a middle-aged homeless man – were found deceased, hanged by rope from trees in separate parts of Mississippi. Mississippi, the state with the slogan Virtute et Armis – “By valor and arms.” 

Maybe we heard about them, maybe we didn’t, but if we did, how quickly we moved on, moved back, took our thoughts away because, you know, the sun had just set on the Sundance Kid, and there are some things that remind us that America hasn’t been an uninterrupted monolog of greatness. Who wants to look at that? Still, one out of three were the right kind. That’s not too bad, all things considered except the things we are newly told not to consider. It seems a reasonable statistic…

And now I’m wondering, are we the right kind of people?

Were the people in that South Carolina waterfront bar the right kind? You heard about them, didn’t you? About the other veteran, this time in a boat instead of a pick up, who murdered three, wounded five, and scarred a community several hours after that other veteran did his thing to the Mormons in Michigan? What kind of people were these victims? Not my people but also my people. Americans. Innocents. People who hoped for a good night’s sleep after a fun night out, who hoped their children would be safe at school in the morning, people who couldn’t see it coming but also knew it could come.  

And speaking of not seeing it coming, Russian drones are flying over Poland, and Ukrainian drones are flying over Moscow, and Trump’s escalator stopped sinisterly at the UN. To top it off,  Melania covered her pretty face with a lovely, plum-colored UFO at a Meet and Greet with British royalty who, according to an unnamed source in a British rag, have sent the downstairs cast of the now-playing Downton Abbey: The Grand Finale scurrying in search of the missing red carpet. Life goes on, cinema happens in real life, and Trump wishes both Ukraine and Putin “good luck” as he committs to continuing the sale of US weaponry to NATO to do with as they please. His person, it now seems, is now a vessel emptied of hate and filled with good will. Jesus saves. 

This is our September timeline. One month. It all seems to come first and last and without order or sense. And its only a fraction.

We don’t know when President Nelson will receive his formal send-off and maybe you don’t care. He was a Latter-day Saint after all, an antique Mormon who was steeped in the vintage perspectives of the 1950s. But I care. The LDS people care. Whether you see us as faithful Christians or someone’s anti-Christ, we care. And we care about bigotry. Or I thought we did. Maybe what happened in Michigan – the mental image of Latter-day Saints running toward the woods to hide from bullets – will remind us to care about those who are misunderstood, gossiped about, targeted for ridicule or hate, or are on the margin in some other way. The LDS margin is brimming with our own version of the wrong kind of people: the doubters, the LGBTQ, the murmurers, the Democrats, and more. The truth is, right now, a lot of LDS people are feeling “othered” among our own. Can you reason why? 

As the month of September closes, we don’t know yet when Pres. Nelson’s funeral will occur, but we do know there won’t be fireworks, and, we hope and pray there will be no violence. We have no expectation the service will be broadcast in full from national news outlets. What we anticipate is a reverent ceremony full of gentle praise for a man who lived an exceptionally long life in an exceptional way, a man who hoped his life would help others find happiness. He succeeded at that. He also, at times, failed. But he mattered. Every day he mattered, just like every one of us. 

(Why do so many moments feel like someone is about to shout, “Stitch incoming!”?)

What we do know is that Pres. Nelson’s funeral will be pre-empted by the October General Conference this weekend and the solemn assembly that I’ve oddly heard nothing about. Surely it’s happening. If you’re a practicing Latter-day Saint, don’t forget to wash your white hankies and brush up on the Hosanna shout because another prophet is coming. That is a reality the church leadership won’t delay. Maybe the next in line has already been set apart, already ascended, or maybe they’ll wait for common consent. Either way, the LDS church is shifting and so is the world. At times, that shifting feels so much like a sifting, a parsing of who belongs and who doesn’t.

To be honest, I’m not sure we, as a people, we as Latter-day Saints, are prepared to live in this kind of world, accustomed as we are to slogans and platitudes that kick all the cans down the road. The Second Coming isn’t going to save us, but the messages of Jesus may if we live them, if we practice loving our neighbors so well that we forget how wrong they are, and if we remember all are alike unto God.

~~~

For none of these iniquities come of the Lord; for he doeth that which is good among the children of men; …and he inviteth them all to come unto him and partake of his goodness…and all are alike unto God, both Jew and Gentile. 2 Ne. 26:33

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