An Open Letter to Charlie Kirk

Fear, prayer, and finding some hope in a seismic shift.

Dear Charlie,

I didn’t know much about you before yesterday, when I watched in live-time horror your assassination on a college campus. For talking. You were just talking to college kids.

You were practically a kid yourself.

What happened to you is the scariest thing I have seen in my adult life. Even more than 9/11, which—coincidentally?— happened twenty-four years ago today. And today I feel a similar shift in the world’s frequency.

Six years ago, I would have detested you. I was a raging, angry, self-righteous NYC Democrat, who believed all the propaganda I was sold. I cried when Trump was elected in 2016. I would have seen you as a threat to my safety, my rights, and my kids’ future happiness. I would have mocked your Christianity and your flag emoji.

But thankfully, Covid woke me up. I watched in disbelief as the world I believed in fell away. The people I thought were smart and thoughtful gave up their rights and complied in what I think is justly described as tyranny. Many of the people I previously looked down upon became stalwart protectors of free speech and civil rights. It required questioning everything I believed in. And thank God.

I think your assassination is ultimately an example of how free speech is fully under attack. Anyone who thinks this is just about right vs left is deluded. The war is between free speech and totalitarian control, and both parties are equally guilty. Whoever murdered you does not want peaceful dialogue or speech they don’t agree with. Anyone applauding your murder is murdering their own right to free speech. To a free society where kids can gather face to face and hear other ideas. This is the very notion upon which this country was founded.

Covid helped me realize how insane the political party I was part of had become. I wasn’t like them anymore. It was incredibly uncomfortable, and indeed, it’s painful to change one’s mind. But I did not simply drift to the other side because I could no longer stomach the Left. I am not a conservative, either, because I also can also see the blatant hypocrisy of your party, too. I de-subscribed to the whole apparatus.

So I am politically homeless, and that’s perfectly okay with me. I’ve opted out. There are parts of the Left I agree with, and parts of the Right I agree with. But I won’t allow myself to be told what to think anymore. I wish more people would leave the two-party system and not let their political beliefs divide them from love and connection with others. I suspect there are more of us than we know.

And, I’m pretty sure that dividing us has been the entire point. There are too many interests that benefit when we are busy screaming at each other online. I think maybe you knew this, too.

So, even the people grotesquely applauding your death—I have to love them, too. I have to have compassion for them because I know I would think the same thing if I were believing what they are believing. I once was that person, too. That’s why, as you exemplified, it’s paramount to examine your beliefs. Test them out. Supercharge your life with your values. Dispense with stupid shit that doesn’t align with your values. If something or someone seeds hate or fear in your heart, it’s on you to understand and examine it.

Otherwise, we are useful idiots, parroting memes and talking points without any conviction or deep, critical thought. The more I examine my own beliefs, the less threatened I am when someone challenges me on them. (And I reserve the right to be wrong.)

This is what we also lost in you yesterday. We lost a powerful and vocal example of peaceful dialogue and disagreement. That you were killed, of all people, says something. And the message is terrifying.

I want us to stop identifying ourselves by our political affiliations. I don’t care that you were conservative; I care that you were a decent person; that you were a father and a husband. You inspired millions of people to engage in dialog, to debate tough decisions and realities. I may not have agreed with you on everything, or even most things. But man, did you challenge people to dig deeper into their belief systems. That’s a good thing. It benefits us all.

Yesterday and last night, I found myself praying. This is relatively new. I’m Christian—technically—and believe in God, but am tentative and twitchy around organized religion. I meditate. I love the woo and witchy. I believe we are more spirit than matter. I didn’t used to think this way, and I certainly didn’t have a strong spiritual connection in my early life. That all changed when my oldest brother committed suicide seven years ago. I know now that the idea that we are separate beings is an illusion. We are all connected to each other. All of us. This means that if we are hating someone, we are really hating ourselves.

I suspect the people that hate you are–deep down in the dark bile of it– jealous. Anyone I’ve hated in my life is because they had something that I wanted for myself, and didn’t believe myself capable or worthy of it. And I would never admit it then, but I know I was jealous of people of deep faith.

I’m still evolving in my spiritual life, whereas you were so confident and knowledgeable and dedicated to your belief in God and Jesus. I was jealous of that surrendering, that freedom, and the strength it gave you to find your purpose and trust it. But I had been poisoned against having true faith because I associated it with the political party I believed to be my enemy. Without knowing it, I was led away from God, and away from connection. Away from myself. This is the disconnection that the people who killed you want.

Many of us are envious of this faith, I suspect, though we may not say so. To give up our fear and victimhood, to surrender to God, and actually allow ourselves to find divine connection each and every day in our own private, internal world. Why is this scary to people? I think because when faith in God goes deep enough, you’re not scared anymore. The forces that killed you want us scared. Perhaps this is why your death happened so publicly.

Once, a few years ago, I had a vision. I was sitting in my office, and my whole body got unexplicably warm, and I saw myself, curled up like a baby, safe in the palm of God’s hand.

I don’t read the Bible, or quote scripture like you, but I go back to this image as much as possible. It brings me peace and comfort in a place no one can touch, and where there is no need for proof. I think this is a form of prayer, too.

When my brother took his own life, it was the most painful thing I’ve ever experienced. But somehow, in the darkness I was able to find light. His death forced me to confront myself and my lack of faith, the lack of an anchoring belief in something larger than myself.

I am hopeful that we can, after the grieving, all find some light. We have a choice in who we want to be as a nation, but it starts with ourselves and our own hearts. It will take deep and honest dialogue. The kind that you practiced: fearless, open, and face-to-face. It will require tolerating discomfort.

Until then, I’m going to think of you curled up in God’s palm.

Thank you, Charlie.