Terror at Conception Abbey

June 26, 2003

Dear Ken,

Beginning to read your stories about the one-year anniversary of the killings at Conception Abbey near St. Joseph, I confess, the idea of another account about another loner who went on a murderous shooting spree didn't compel me. Haven't we read and seen enough? Would we understand senselessness any better for revisiting the details of how the two monks were shot to death and the other two were maimed?

But the story about the eight minutes of murder is riveting. "On June 10, 2002, death came riding up in a green Chevy Cavalier," you write. I may never forget the image of a priest pressing on a stomach wound, afraid his intestines were coming out.

Most compelling of all are the words of the Benedictine monks who survived. I know how the rest of us handle senseless events like Columbine. We go numb. We don't understand. We look for someone or something to blame.

"... We pray, Forgive us as we forgive," the Abbot says.

Another priest who said, "I'm still forgiving," probably spoke the deepest truth.

Blame is useless, the Budd- hist monk and writer Thicht Nhat Hanh says. "Blame has no positive effect at all, nor does trying to persuade using reason and arguments... No blame, no reasoning, no argument, just understanding. If you understand, and you show that you understand, you can love, and the situation will change."

Obviously, Lloyd Jeffress was not understood. By putting the end of a .22-caliber rifle in his own mouth, he ensured that no one would get the chance.

Most of us don't bother asking why these atrocities continue to occur. We lock our doors, harden our hearts. You examine the state of the perpetrator in an attempt to pry open the lock on the senselessness.

The compendium of his physical and emotional afflictions was stunning. His 71-year-old bloodstream was a pharmaceutical swamp containing Zestril, Lipitor, Flomax, Proscar, Lorazepam, Buspirone, Fluoxetine. How could his judgment not have been affected?

He left behind an ex-wife, and an estranged daughter and brother. Nobody in his neighborhood really knew him.

Estrangement is once again the common thread.

The lives of monks are difficult for most of us to comprehend, but the outdoor chef, Brother Damian, who cooks on a "Holy Smoker," is immediately lovable.

The monks and priests console themselves with another truth, that those who died at the abbey knew they were going to die there someday just as their brothers will. This is a perspective that comprehends that the survival of the spirit is not subject to an assault rifle in the hands of a man, as you say, "in a bad place."

Thicht Nhat Hanh poses this question to his Christian friends: "Where was Jesus Christ before he was born?"

Look at a sheet of paper, this other monk says. "You can see that the paper is made of trees and sunshine and earth and clouds ..."

We know that Jesus existed before he was born, and that he exists still. It's the same for us, monks or killers of monks. It's the same.

Only impermanence never changes.

Love, Sam

Sam Blackwell is a staff writer for the Southeast Missourian.