Dear Aaron,

Aaron,

You are constantly in my thoughts be it waking, sleeping, walking the dog, eating cereal, taking out the trash. If I am not directly engaged in something, it is your face I see.

Your face, your young and so familiar face. I never met you but your face is a Bushnell face through and through and so my mind is tricked that I did in fact know you. In reality, I left the community a few years before you were born. Your mother and father, your aunts and uncles, your grandparents, these are people woven into daily memories. If I had obeyed instructions to marry a certain young man, I would have been the sister in law of one of your aunts.

Your grandmother taught a small group of us cake decorating classes one spring. I picture us so clearly giggling around her dining table as she demonstrated how to make every type of flower and leaf with delicious icing she made before we arrived. That icing was as comforting to me then as this memory is to me now. She never scolded us for eating the icing and bless her, she didn’t even silence our giggling. Your grandfather gave me my first awl. It was old, with wood like leather and fit my hand perfectly. I was thrilled with the gift and use it to this day. Your mother, she was quirky and funny and distinctly herself. The outline of her hair could be identified from the furthest end of the lower hallway and her laugh carried just as far. I have been trying to pin down a memory of your mother. We were on the third floor of the main building and standing outside the little phone room. I can’t remember our conversation but I know she both listened to and comforted me. I know well what the community does to children and parents but in the years I knew her, she was a delight.

Knowing your family does not mean I presume to know you. I have read your last words over and over. Your friends have shared stories and memories that paint you as earnest, kind hearted, intentional and intelligent. Their stories tell of a young man who was exceptionally kind to people who are most often overlooked, who was deep in thought trying to make sense of a broken and messy world, who more often than not made choices based on the needs of others. How I wish I did know you. How I wish all of us who have left could have been a support for you; a band of rebels where you could have seen yourself in us just as many of us see ourselves in you. How my younger self identifies with you, longing to make a difference, despair at suffering, searching for answers and meaning, unraveling beliefs. I went to an anarchy meeting while in college and the words resonated deeply with me. I probably would have returned but was unsettled in any group; be it Christians or anarchists.

We all leave at our own time; months, years, decades apart. Then we each live the years of confusion, of guilt, of questioning. We all bear the painful process of deconstructing one version of ourselves and little by little birthing a new version. Generation after generation of young people treated as a collective group of free labor but individually broken down with stunning accuracy to our individual personalities. We have not figured out how to help the next group of children survive a childhood that is no childhood at all. How to survive the constant dread that you are not good enough. How to survive the constant fear of sinning. How to act just good enough and just bad enough to reach the end of each day's tightrope. Many of us are haunted that young people leave without knowing a support system exists and haunted that we haven't created that support system.

So I talk to you now. A terribly sad and one sided conversation but deep in the black hole of my belief system (something I have not re-birthed) there is the tiniest hope you might hear. Do not listen to the ones judging you. All who judge you are lost in their own fear. They judge you from their years of life, forgetting your youth. They judge you from their amount of empathy, ignorant of the heart that breaks with the worlds’ suffering. They judge you from their own self worth, unaware that any child of the community does not know our worth. They judge you from fear of their own silence in the midst of injustice. They judge you because the fact that you sacrificed your life for others is more disturbing to them than the whole of Gaza’s suffering. And on and on it goes.

Listen well to all who have embraced you, to all who honor your sacrifice, to all who see the extent of your convictions and the courage of your actions. Let me share why you are being embraced, why you will live in many hearts forever. Aaron, this is the first my fingers have paused, the first they hover over these letters in great unease because how do we talk about what you did and yet how can we not? So I tread lightly, terrified of misspeaking and yet more terrified of ignoring you, of erasing you, of being too afraid to speak of you. I remember your words and am ashamed to be so timid. You are embraced because you have a heart that is as sensitive as it is strong. You have a mind that is big enough to see humanity’s suffering while simultaneously forging your own way of thinking. You are embraced because you spoke out. You stood up. You said what so many only think. You are embraced because while all of us watch in horror, maybe lose sleep, maybe send money, maybe use our tiny social media platform to yell ceasefire into the void, you did something. You were not silent. On this let’s be very clear; your action is a tragedy and your motives are pure. Both are true. Both co-exist. People need simple and they retreat when life gets complicated, even worse, they attack when complicated comes too close. Your life was complicated. Your first twenty years on earth were spent in a place where every minute of every day is planned and plotted to keep you down. Keep you obedient and compliant. Keep you talented and useful. Keep you broken and silent. They raise us to be servants not to God, but to themselves. To serve their lust for power and their obsession with control. Most people fill their lives with their own misery but you, as you sought to free your heart and mind and soul from twenty years of battering, you ended yours because of the misery of others. You are exceptionally rare. Tragic, yes. Brave, yes. Tragic, yes. Selfless, yes. For all the saints and sinners, why can’t people see that the loss of your life is a soul crushing tragedy and still honor who you are and what you stand for.

Let’s go to the harbor and walk on the flat sand of the open bay when the tide is out. Our feet leaving those magical prints in the sand that disappear before your eyes and the evening light a glow giving the most despairing heart a little hope. It was the only place I could breathe during my time there and perhaps you felt the same. Could you talk to anyone at the community of your longings and fears? Surrounded by people who talk of love and not a one to be trusted. When did you stop believing in the God of our childhood? The one who supposedly loved us but more impactful, the one who made our innards tremble with fear. What made you leave? Was it a last straw or the whole rotten hay bale? Did you plan it for months or did you have enough one day? From your friends, we learn the most beautiful things about you. Your passion for the homeless, your conviction against injustice, your rage at politicians, your determination to create change; the very things the historical Jesus spent his life addressing. And yet, born and raised at the Community of Jesus, all you knew was the selfish, insular, self grandizing world in which we were raised. The world in which we had to work tirelessly, smile always, suffocate feelings, bury hopes, perform perfectly and confess sin after endless sin when come to find out what we called sin the rest of the world calls being human. The sun is setting and we turn away from the ocean, from the boats offering freedom, from the open horizon where possibilities are endless. We turn towards the community with the perfect homes and perfect fences. We know it is a lie. We know every day we stay is another day fear wins.

Aaron, you dear boy, a lover of cats and broken people, a searcher for a better world, a rock for friends in need, a soldier who saw a different war, a man who felt the burden of a million bombs, what you did, you did from a place of love. And that makes you stronger and better than the whole lot you left behind. From a cult to the military, your days of freedom must have been few. I wish for you, in whatever exists beyond this form of blood and bones, that you feel the love you demonstrated here on earth coming back a hundredfold to envelop you, mend your broken heart and carry you to a place of freedom.

I hope you are okay with this one sided conversation. If people can relate to you, they might judge less and listen more. They might let your life, your loss, your statement, speak to them. Please know this; you made an impact. You affected people. There is a street in Gaza named after you. You made a people who the world is watching be destroyed, feel seen and valued. Your story is being told. And for myself, and many more, we will do better, act sooner, sacrifice more. We will say your name and we will see your face. We will carry you in our hearts.