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Category Archives: gun violence
Mere mortals
Consider the vision of God’s kingdom that Jesus offers: a world in which the poor have power; where the bereft are comforted. Where profits are harvested as food for the hungry, with ploughshares beaten out of pistols. Where the name Pulse has not been perverted to echo with death and anger, but resumes its resonance of life, and love. Where Aurora means the halo of light around the moon, giving glory to God with all the heavenly bodies, and we no longer ask, do you mean the one in Colorado, or the one in Illinois? Where the south side of Chicago is simply the sunny side of the street. Where the Tree of Life grows green in the Garden of Eden. A kingdom where the name Parkland conjures up, not the valley of the shadow of death, but a quiet place, green pastures beside still waters. Continue reading
Posted in gun violence, lectionary reflection, sermon
Tagged #Parkland, a year C Epiphany 6, Aurora, gun violence, Jeremiah, Jesus, kingdom of God, Pulse, Tree of Life
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Invested
It’s the sixth anniversary of the mass murder of children and adults at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, CT, and I have been asked to comment on the topic of shareholder advocacy in gun manufacturing, and it’s about breaking my heart. Continue reading
Posted in gun violence, story
Tagged Episcopal Church, gun violence, investor activism, shareholder advocay
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Olive branches over ordnance
The olive trees, ancient and observant, hearing the blood that cries out from the land, whisper that the answer to Cain’s crime cannot be to take the hoe from his hand and hand him an AR-15. Continue reading
Posted in current events, gun violence, story
Tagged Cain and Abel, Holy Land, mass shooting, olive branch, orange stole
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Mother of exiles
We gathered in song in a baseball park adjacent to the prison. Our hosts advised us that the women inside could hear us rallying and praying on their behalf. Continue reading
Posted in current events, gun violence, prayer, story
Tagged family separation, gun violence, immigration, Statue of Liberty
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Pentecost: love and fire
If fire represents the Holy Spirit, then we have blasphemed the Spirit of God by making fire the creature of our destruction instead of the essence of our life.
The Holy Spirit, on the other hand, cannot be tamed, and does not destroy when given free reign, because she is not our creature to control, but she is the very essence of God, who is love. Continue reading
Stealing the gospel
More guns bring more violence, and we have had enough of the ‘gall of bitterness and the chains of wickedness.’ Continue reading
Posted in gun violence, homily, meditation, sermon
Tagged Acts 8:9-25, Columbine, gospel, gun violence, nonviolence, NRA, Simon the Magician
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Palm Sunday 2018: outsourcing peace
It is hard to keep up with the Prince of Peace, but I learned a valuable lesson years ago from a philosopher named Tony whose day job was selling burglar alarms. Continue reading
Seventeen
At ten o’clock on the fourteenth day of the third month of year two thousand eighteen of this portion of our history, twenty-eight days after seventeen of their generation died in one school, in one day, countless students will leave their classes, searching for one more word of covenant, one more promise of life redeemed from the chaos. Continue reading
Posted in current events, gun violence, story
Tagged beatitudes, Noah's Ark, numerology, school shootings
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Idols made of metal
The bronze serpent was not an amulet, but an icon of futility; an emblem of the impotence of evil in the sight of a gracious God.
The modern casting would be an AR-15 made into a museum piece, rendered harmless, useless, toothless by its irrelevance, not empowered by false reverence. Continue reading
Sinners at the cross of angry Jesus
I’m not going to go through the Commandments one by one, because frankly, unless we can reconcile our fundamental issues with the first three and the prohibition on killing, not to mention loving our neighbour, I do not see a way for us to achieve any kind of passing grade. Continue reading
over the water 