Bear one another’s burdens, and in this way you will fulfill the law of Christ. —Galatians 6:2
On November 18th, 1999, the Aggie Bonfire on Texas A&M University campus collapsed, killing 12 people and injuring 27. Three days later, it was a Sunday morning at Highland Park Baptist Church in Austin, where I would offer the invocation to start the worship service. Here is that prayer…
Giving God, for these changing days, as the sun comes and goes and the wind rises and falls, we thank you. For birthdays, holidays, special times of gathering, and for this Thanksgiving week, we thank you. For our ability to learn all our lives, not just in childhood and adolescence, but through daily lessons, bits of advice, human suffering, and joyful experiences, we thank you. With so much that we have to be grateful to you for, God, we might overlook certain inexplicable occurrences in our world when those things need our attention, support, and prayer. In College Station earlier this week, 12 people lost their lives trying to uphold tradition and express what they had to be thankful for. Now we pray that their families will have hope in the days to come; that they will recognize the tremendous gifts bestowed upon them in what their lost loved ones had given to them and what they continue to give to them in their passing; and that they find peace. When times call for celebration and we let our laughter explode, you are there for us to thank, O God. And when accidents happen and we must cope and rise from the darkness, you are there for us to thank, O God. In praise and adoration we lift this prayer up to you in the name of the risen Christ. Amen.
Six years later, I would answer the call to serve a United Church of Christ congregation called Friends in College Station, Texas. The campus pastor for United Campus Ministry in Aggieland at the time, Kyle Walker, reached out. He treated me to coffee at Sweet Eugene’s, where his eyes filled with tears as he recollected the night of the Bonfire collapse. “I was on the scene working triage. Everyone was in shock. All I could do was just be there.” Like so many at the site of that tragic event, Kyle was bearing burdens of devastation too heavy for any one person to carry.
Twenty-five years after the Bonfire fell, I met with a local group of University of Texas alumni at the Bonfire Memorial. It was a Friday morning a couple of weeks ago. We were participating in another tradition: cleaning the memorial. Our group cleaned three portals, the first of which was Michael Ebanks (’03). I learned that Michael’s father was a Longhorn, and that he had died the previous year just weeks before the annual cleaning of the memorial. Bearing that in mind, the local Texas Exes honored the Ebanks family by cleaning Michael’s portal; and a year later we were maintaining that tradition.
While we scrubbed and rinsed, a woman in a yellow shirt and blue jeans walked up. Someone in our group who recognized her asked us to stop working for a moment to greet her. It was Bulinda Ebanks, Michael’s mother. Bulinda was all smiles, thanking us for being there and reminiscing about the countless people who carried her family’s burden of grief in those tender days. She recalled receiving so many letters of consolation from people across the country and around the world that she and her husband, Jerry, had to store them in giant trash cans. Standing in Michael’s portal, I told Bulinda about that prayer I offered the Sunday after the Bonfire collapsed, and she told me about how her family and she have learned again and again how to cling to gratitude and keep moving forward; to cope and rise from the darkness as that prayer put it 25 years ago.
I’m still processing what it felt like cleaning that particular portal and crossing paths with Bulinda on that sacred ground all these years later. It was an honor. But more than that, it filled me with a hope I cannot describe. It’s a hope that transcends grief and despair, a hope that’s bigger than me and any burden I might be carrying. I don’t know. Maybe Bulinda was walking, talking evidence of love’s fulfillment. That’s what fulfilling the law of Christ is, I believe: bringing love’s mandate of laying down our lives for one another to the point of overflowing.
In this world, “beautiful and terrible things will happen” as Frederick Beuchner says. But through it all—joy and pain—we are meant to share the load and not be left to dance or weep in isolation. If being immersed in the traditions of this place called Aggieland for nearly 20 years has taught me anything, it’s that. Thanks be to God.
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