Pulse Plus Two: Affirmation, Redemption, Transformation

Two years ago we awoke to the sound of helicopters overhead. They were close enough to generate a good bit of noise, enough to wake us from our sound sleep. It was 4:30 AM.

What in the world was happening?

We got up and turned on the local news station. At that moment, our whole world turned upside down.

The early reporting from the Pulse massacre was conservative in terms of casualty estimates. Part of the problem was that law enforcement was not able to get into the club for a long period of time until the gunman finally turned his weapon of war on himself and the slaughter was over.

It would be days before all the victims were accounted for. I worried about students I knew who frequented the club and held my breath each time the list was updated as the number of known deaths rose and  the number of missing dwindled.

When the final list was announced I let go a long exhale of relief only to feel remorseful almost immediately. It was true these were not my students, the young people who lent their lives to me to know, love and teach for a semester at a time. But they were someone’s child, someone’s brother, uncle, mother, sister, aunt, cousin.

The law enforcement agents charged with securing and then processing the scene were faced with a surreal, grisly task. The worst part, many said, was hearing the cell phones which rang with increasing urgency until one by one their power supplies dwindled and died. It is hardly surprising that many of these agents today face serious cases of PTSD.

The local hospital, a mere three blocks away, would be overwhelmed with those bearing horrendous wounds, dying young people and family and friend desperate to know of the status of their loved ones. These doctors and staff would provide Herculean service to cope with an ungodly atrocity. In the meantime, thousands of local residents would stand in line to offer their blood as a means of dealing with catastrophe. 

In the days following the massacre, many of us in Orlando held our breath to see what the response to the massacre would be. In the end, that response was overwhelming.


The funeral mass at the Episcopal Cathedral of St. Luke, a parish with a checkered history regarding homophobia, was amazingly uplifting. The Orlando Police Department rose to the occasion to prevent the hate-blinded bigots of the Westboro Baptist cult from placing their hatred within the line of sight of the mourners entering the Cathedral. 

The officers timed the march of gay clergy and parishioners of all stripes in front of the Westboro protesters just at the moment the coffin was unloaded from the hearse into the cathedral. The Cathedral provided time for those who had lost loved ones to speak of that loss.

Love wins.

I think what many of us had not anticipated was the outpouring of loving support we would experience from all over the world.

We had no idea that President Obama and Vice President Biden would come to our town to pay their respects at the makeshift memorial in the heart of our city. We could not have predicted that former Secretary of State and later presidential candidate Hillary Clinton would also come to pay her respects.

 (Notice who is missing)

We could not have predicted that inpouring of supportive messages and videos that would swamp our Facebook sites from places as distant as Asia, Europe and Latin America. The knowledge that we were not alone in our incredible pain and profound grief was more important than they could know.

We also could not have predicted that on the night of the vigil at Lake Eola Park in the heart of our city, a week after the massacre, 100,000 people would come bearing candles to completely encircle the mile long perimeter of Lake Eola. Our city, in the heart of a metropolitan area of 2.5 million people, would turn out to say that hatred would not have the last word.

Love wins.  

But perhaps most importantly, we could not have predicted the artistic outflowing that would ultimately transform the darkest of despair into forms of art that would in themselves prove the most profound forms of resistance to that darkness. There were the signs on the billboards all over town. There were the makeshift memorials on site to remember those we had lost.

And then the artists entered the scene. The murals began to appear all over town. And the videos began to appear online. My absolute favorite used the music of Whitney Houston, herself no stranger to deep grief and incredible suffering, to encourage

Orlando residents to dance. “Keep Dancing, Orlando” brought people from the theme parks to car dealers to the local order of the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence to the screen.

The message was simple: You will not defeat us. 

Love wins.

All over town the artists made their vibrant commentary. Writers created elegies for the dead and their survivors. Musicians performed songs to honor this community that had weathered an existential soul rendering. The murals, paintings and sculpture of our artists remain these two years later reminding us that we are, indeed, a strong community. And in that strength we found a way to transform the darkest of atrocity into hope.

Love wins.  

Two years later, the madness of our gun-culture remains one of the banes of our existence as a people. Earlier this year, Marjorie Stoneman Douglas High in Parkland, FL, only three hours to our south, was the scene of yet another slaughter with weapons of war. And on the eve of this second anniversary of Pulse, yet another angry man with an arsenal inflicted potentially fatal wounds on an Orlando Police officer investigating a domestic disturbance which ultimately ended in the shooting death of four children and the gunman.

And yet, two years later, I know we are lucky to live in a place that has long called itself “the City Beautiful.” While the original self-description was focused on the physical beauty of this semi-tropical city, the events in the wake of an atrocity affirmed the fact that the beauty of this place is not just skin deep, it is the character of its people.

Love wins.  

In the two years since the Pulse Massacre, the darkness of that night has been redeemed by the will of a community determined not to surrender to evil. And two years later, we find ourselves a community transformed by our time in the fires of Hell.

Our mayors have become agents of healing for other communities afflicted by the demons of an irresponsible gun policy an adolescent nation-state simply refuses to come to grips with. We have sent our police, our grief counselors, offering the benefit of our experience, our wisdom hard earned in the fires of Thanatos, to those who have recently become unwilling members of the demonic fraternity of atrocity.  

In the process, Orlando has become an instrument of redemption.

Our artists, musicians, poets, videographers, have also made us instruments of transformation, weaving the dregs of sorrow and sadness into new ways of being human.This is not a role any of us would have chosen. But we have undertaken our calling with abandon. And the results are inspiring.

I am grateful for this City Beautiful which is my home. If I was ever doubtful this would be my home for the remainder of my life, I am certain now. This is home.

Love wins.  

The “Keep Dancing, Orlando”  video inevitably makes me laugh and brings tears to my eyes. Its hope and inspiration move me to my core and its rhythms will not let my feet remain still.

And yet I weep for the four beautiful children taken from us this day as well as the one profoundly disturbed young man who took them – and potentially a loyal law enforcement officer – from us. If I have ever had any calling in my life, it is to work until my dying breath to end the reign of terror flowing from the irresponsible gun policies of an adolescent culture.

At the end of this reminiscence, I reaffirm my belief that despite all the evil, all the darkness, the stupidity and the cowardice, despite the atrocity and death, I still believe that in the end, love wins. But I know that we have a very long way to go before that message makes a permanent difference in this world.

To that end, I pledge my life. 

Love wins.  Period.

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Harry Scott Coverston

Orlando, Florida

 frharry@cfl.rr.com

hcoverston.orlando@gmail.com

If the unexamined life is not worth living, surely an unexamined belief system, be it religious or political, is not worth holding. Most things worth considering do not come in sound bites.

For what does G-d require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your G-d? (Micah 6:8, Hebrew Scriptures)

Do not be daunted by the enormity of the world's grief. Do justly, now. Love mercy, now. Walk humbly now. You are not obligated to complete the work, but neither are you free to abandon it. - Rabbi Rami Shapiro, Wisdom of the Jewish Sages (1993) 

 © Harry Coverston 2018

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