Tag Archives: gun violence

Holy Innocents: transferred

Posted on December 28, 2021 by Rosalind C Hughes

There must have been others who retracedtheir ancestors’ footprints over Sinai,although no Moses basket launched upon the Nile;instead, the Innocents wakened from a nightmareby the whisper of a blade, the fadingmemory of mothers’ final, ululating lullaby… Innocence today plays with … Continue reading →

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Holy Innocents: a pieta

Posted on December 28, 2021 by Rosalind C Hughes

The stoles are cobbled together from whatever orange fabric I can lay my hands on in any given season; the constant that binds them together as a family – except for the orange colour – is the children’s handprint pattern that finishes each one off at the ends… Continue reading →

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Suffer the little children

Posted on December 17, 2021 by Rosalind C Hughes

Rumours of rumours; and the rub is that in this country, in this time, we cannot dismiss them until the day is done and the sun has set over the farthest gate. It should not be this way. Continue reading →

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It’s (not too) complicated

Posted on December 5, 2021 by Rosalind C Hughes

It means beating swords into ploughshares, guns into shovels, removing them from the hands and the lives and the deaths of our children. There is no deeper shadow cast than the deaths of children, and the enormity of the problem before us is our mountain to climb. Continue reading →

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A sustaining hope

Posted on August 8, 2021 by Rosalind C Hughes

The interventions of God, strength for the journey, can come from humans sweating over laboratory test tubes as easily and as often as angels baking on hot stones. Continue reading →

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Do not invite death

Posted on June 27, 2021 by Rosalind C Hughes

We are not made in anyone’s image but God’s. We are not made for the corruption of death but for the covenant of life. Jesus does not love death or bloodshed – but Jesus loves us. Knowing this, how can we not consider turning from death to life; to pour out healing without counting the cost; to withhold death and restore relationship wherever it is possible; to deny the devil’s envy and replace it with love? Continue reading →

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Trinity Sunday: we who are many are one

Posted on May 30, 2021 by Rosalind C Hughes

It is the mutuality of the Trinity that we seek. We hear its echoes in our prayers: “though we are many, we are one body” (Romans 12:5). We come closest to it when we experience compassion. Continue reading →

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Let justice roll like a river; still waters can wait

Posted on April 24, 2021 by Rosalind C Hughes

There is no way of praying Psalm 23 truthfully, honestly, lovingly, in this time and place that does not acknowledge that there are no still waters, there can be no resting in meadows, when violence threatens to break in at any moment. There is no peace while injustice holds sway anywhere among us. Continue reading →

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Are we there yet?

Posted on March 28, 2021 by Rosalind C Hughes

There is nothing in Christ’s story that would justify our sacrifice of children, women, grocery shoppers, police officers, and passers by to defend our right to reserve weapons of violence to ourselves. On the contrary, the resurrection is God’s ultimate judgement on the violence that nailed Jesus to the cross. The resurrection is God’s utter negation and reversal of all that would kill the beloved. Continue reading →

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#DoSomething

Posted on September 18, 2019 by Rosalind C Hughes

Expanding background checks makes us accountable to one another for the spread and distribution of deadly weapons. Red flag laws would be, I believe, an Act of compassion. We might even find, as we re-examine our relationship with guns, that we do not need them as much, or as many, or to hold them as close as we have thought. Continue reading →

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