The news broke on Wednesday morning, August 27, 2025. Early into the first mass of the new school year at Annunciation Catholic Church in Minneapolis, Minnesota, a shooter unleashed a vicious attack on the worshippers. Two children, ages eight and ten, lay dead, fifteen other children were wounded as well as three adult parishioners in their 80s. The prayers became the prey.
In the wake of this heinous act, one of the most poignant, passionate statements came from the Mayor of Minneapolis, Jacob Frey. “Don’t just say this is about thoughts and prayers right now. These kids were literally praying.” Frey then quoted the African proverb: “When you pray, move your feet.”
When you pray, move your feet.
How many of us who offer “thoughts and prayers” actually do pray for the person(s)? Most of us mean it when we say it. Maybe we just don’t know what else to say to someone who is grieving the loss of a loved one. We mean well and we want to offer comfort, but we can’t stop there.
When you pray, move your feet.
The next day Mayor Frey said he’d only had three hours of sleep the night before, during which one of his daughters climbed into bed with him and wound up putting one of her feet in his face. The preciousness of that little ordinary thing was no longer an annoyance.
When you pray, move your feet.
Someone interviewed on national television urged us to realize that “They’re not somebody else’s children. They are all our children.” In our disconnecting culture more and more of us live a significant part of our lives through electronic devices. Tragic events like this one become just one more bad thing we’ve seen regularly on our screens, numbing us to the realities of suffering, pain, and death.
When you pray, move your feet.
Beginning with the Columbine school shootings of April 20, 1999, most estimates are that 200 to 218 of our children have been slaughtered, not to mention school-related adults. Close to 370 others were wounded. No count exists of those who have been mentally and emotionally wounded. So many hopes dashed. So many futures snuffed out. So many dreams that will never come to fruition. No first dates. No new driver’s licenses. No high school graduations. No college graduations. No marriages. No children.
When you pray, move your feet.
This morning (August 31) I watched a segment of CBS’ Sunday Morning that covered the lasting legacy of loss parents experience after having their child slaughtered in a school shooting.* Theirs is a loss that always lingers, a piercing pain that perpetually persists.
When you pray, move your feet.
Michael Moyski and Jackie Flavin will never have any more precious moments with their ten-year-old daughter, Harper. She will forever be ten. Jesse and Mollie Merkel will never have any more precious moments with their eight-year-old son, Fletcher. He will forever be eight. Nor will the parents of the shooter, Robin Westman, ever see their grown child have their own family and give them grandchildren. None of these will ever come out of the specter than will now mark them for the rest of their natural born lives.
When you pray, move your feet.
How many of us will take positive and decisive action to help make our children and communities safer? Are your children safe in their school? Please find out. If horrific things like school shootings are to cease, we must give more than lip service. We needn’t ask, “What will they do?” rather, the searing question, “What will I do?”
When you pray, move your feet.
Mayor Frey urged us to give our children an extra hug before they go to school and to value the little things like handing them a cup of applesauce on their way out the door. Our children are our most precious gifts. We must treat them as such and protect them as such.
When you pray, move your feet.
There is no such thing as an “extra” hug for our children. Not now. Not ever.
When you pray, move your feet.
When you pray, move your feet indeed.
…and that’s the View from The Balcony.
Randy Weeks is a Licensed Professional Counselor, a Certified Shamanic Life Coach, an ordained minister, singer-songwriter, actor, writer, and a former triathlete. He may be reached at: randallsweeks@gmail.com.
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