Tag Archives: mass shooting

A psalm of lament

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

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

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

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

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

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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