A candlelight vigil is held for the victims of the Umpqua Community College mass shooting in Stewart Park, Umpqua, Ore., Oct. 1, 2015. Photo by Mike Brunker/NBC News
Woke up to another school shooting. Another campus tragedy unfolded this morning at 10:38am PST.
I turned on my computer, went to feed the cat, and came back to see the Breaking News.. “This morning on a campus in southwestern Oregon.. yet another school shooting in America.”
I was not shocked. I wake up every morning and expect to see the horror in this world spin out stories of unimaginable grief. I have internalized that we now live within this staggering pace toward our self-deconstruction of civilization. (Much-less a sense of our lost humanity).
God is not punishing us. (Even though punishment for our social justice acts-of-omission regarding the cessation of gun violence might seem justified.)
We are punishing our children.
After the ghastly evil that destroyed the lives of 20 children and 6 adult staff members at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut I have ceased to be shocked by the extent people will go to create hideous ways to undo human existence.
(A girl lights candles at a memorial in Newtown, Conn., a day after the massacre.) (Olivier Douliery/Abaca Press/MCT)
I am only shocked that anybody is left surprised that SHOOTING INNOCENT PEOPLE (children by any other name) has not stopped.
Who the living hell has stopped anything related to the subject of guns, mass shootings, or the motivations and root causes behind any part of these tragedies? No one has. No one.
President Barack Obama spoke to the nation regarding the school shooting at Umpqua Community College in Roseburg, Oregon.
“There’s been another mass shooting in America,” he said to start his speech.
He went on and said, “Our thoughts and prayers are not enough,”
“It’s not enough.”
What is left to say after the carnage at Sandy Hook in 2012, or the repulsive event at the Emanuel AME Church in downtown Charleston, South Carolina on June 17 this year? What is there to do when so many American citizens insist that gun ownership is their right and not their privilege?
There is no logic.
There is no common ground.
There is no justice.
There is none .. not when last October 5 children of God (including the shooter) from Pilchuck High School in Marysville, WA were added to the inexcusable toll of mass gun murder.. along with the 12 children of God shot dead at the Century 16 movie theater in Aurora, CO, and the horrific gun slaughter of 32 more children of God at Virginia Tech in 2007, and backward beyond the 12 children of God who were so methodically and unspeakably executed at Columbine on April 20, 1999.
And what of Umpqua Community College in Roseburg , OR and the 9 murdered children of God lost today? Shot with a gun.
So when we witness – on every level of media available – the inevitable coverage that is thrust at us because of “yet another senseless shooting” .. not much is left but further numbness to the obvious truth.
Guns must be eliminated as an object of power for the sake of all of God’s children.
Who has the will to do this?
Who but people of faith in a just and loving God that insists upon our intentional involvement in bringing about peace.
We know these Anti-gun violence groups such as the Coalition to Stop Gun Violence, Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence, Sandy Hook Promise, Everytown for Gun Safety, Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America, Common Cause , the Children’s Defense Fund, and more .. they do exist. Can they ban together and create an indivisible vigil before congress?
We know there are others. If no one has the will to lead the majority of American citizens who are firmly opposed to the rampant unchecked “right to own a gun – even if it kills me and you” gun rights activist agenda.. then we have no answer to .. “yet another senseless shooting.”
A National Town Meeting will be called. Someone must call it. An unyielding indivisible vigil must begin.
WE WILL.
Occupy Faith therefore calls for a A National Town Meeting during the week after Christmas this year to begin to address the elimination of guns as an object of power .. for the sake of all of God’s children.
Do you have the will to join us?
Write us immediately.
Dare You to Move..
Grace and Peace to You.. Michael
This doesn’t have to continue indefinitely. Australia enacted much stricter gun laws after a massacre in the 1990s and there has been none there since. If we could ever get a Congress that had the guts, sense, and heart to agree on anything substantive the same thing could happen here. But nothing will happen until the Tea Party can be completely marginalized. Pray for our souls.