Tag Archives: mass shooting

Let Jesus be Jesus

Posted on July 14, 2024 by Rosalind C Hughes

For us, and for the sake of our country, this is not a choice between the bullet and the ballot box. This is a choice between the bullet and our souls. Jesus had a choice: call down legions of angels or go to the cross, subvert the power of political violence by defeating death itself. Defeat hatred with the overpowering love of God. Overwhelm vengeance with the suffocating aroma of mercy. Break open the patterns of this world, and let in the kingdom of heaven. Continue reading →

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Stop the bleeding

Posted on October 26, 2023 by Rosalind C Hughes

Dear God,we cry, dear Lord,how much blood can humanity shedbefore we become something otherthan the body that you formedand the spirit that you breathedand the image that you calledvery good? My Christ,can we lay down our weaponsand crawl beneath your … Continue reading →

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A psalm of lament

Posted on February 14, 2023 by Rosalind C Hughes

We turn to you, Compassionate One,
with your endless forbearance and infinite mercy, and pray that your patience will one day break;

because it seems some days that ours, our capacity for carnage, is everlasting. Continue reading →

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Among the living and the dead

Posted on June 19, 2022 by Rosalind C Hughes

When the demons saw Jesus, they were afraid. They begged for their lives. When Jesus showed mercy even to the demons, they proved their destructive nature by plunging the herd of swine into the sea. Did he not know it must be so? It was their nature to be evil spirits. It was, it is Jesus’ nature to be love. Continue reading →

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Prayer for an end to mass shootings

Posted on May 1, 2021 by Rosalind C Hughes

My God,can we not go one week,sabbath to sabbath,without a mass shooting? Will you not beatour pistols into ploughshares,our shotguns into shovels,our rifles into rakes,massage some feeling intoour hearts of stone? I sigh, open my eyes;the mirror stares back in … Continue reading →

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Everything comes with a side of guns

Posted on August 21, 2019 by Rosalind C Hughes

I did not have the time to wonder deeply why a construction company, expert in damp recovery and replastering, thought that an active shooter drill would be right up their alley (nor why we would call them first in the unfortunate event). I did not have the wherewithal in that Thursday moment to explain my theological aversion to drilling fear into our worship, or the stubborn resistance to the inevitably of guns everywhere that stems from the sanctuary of my foolish faith. Continue reading →

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A Vigil for the victims of gun violence

Posted on August 8, 2019 by Rosalind C Hughes

We were heart-stricken but honoured to host at Epiphany a Vigil for the most recent victims of mass murder and gun violence, in Gilroy, El Paso, and Dayton, organized by God Before Guns. Continue reading →

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Olive branches over ordnance

Posted on November 8, 2018 by Rosalind C Hughes

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 →

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