Decades ago, the future clergyman was a 19-year-old clerk in a Tacoma, Wash., record store when three robbers stormed into the place. One hopped over the counter and demanded the young Hayashi give him all the money in the cash register. It was $9.
He laid on the floor in shock until others found him. A few months and multiple surgeries later, Hayashi emerged from his hospital bed forever changed.
To this day, the leader of the state’s 5,000 or so Episcopalians remains convinced that the solution to violence is not more guns — especially not in churches — even in the aftermath of a massacre at a Texas Baptist church, where a single shooter gunned down 26 worshippers in the latest attack on a faith community.