Back in December of 2012,I wrote an essay on guns,prompted by the tragedy in Connecticut.I labeled it,at that time as a "slaughter of innocents",and I stand by that today.The essay ran into three or four online installments and is as yet unfinished.And I caught some serious flak over my take on gun violence,which I was only too happy to accept,given the grave nature of the problem.
Lately I began dusting off this essay,along with a number of others I'd written while living in Western Canada.The idea was to perfect the lot of them for publishing in print media.
Then Orlando happened.Nothing had changed,things have only progressed from tragic incident to tragic incident.But I've no thought of republishing that lengthy essay here.Instead I've decided to share a piece of writing I did last week at a writers group I attend on Monday afternoons.From beginning to end the writing took about thirteen minutes,Yet it lays out the gun problem in America as I've now come to see it.So here it is in pretty much unedited form:
We used to listen to my mother tell us bedtime stories when we were really small and,for the most part they were stories she'd selected from a big illustrated book Bible stories.At about seven O'clock my younger sister and I would settle into our beds and my mother would begin reading.She would read about Adam and the apple,Daniel and the lions or Noah's ark.But the one story I'm remembering today,right now is the story of Moses bringing God's Law down from the mountain.Thou Shalt Not Steal.Thou Shalt Not Kill.Thou Shalt not Commit Adultery.And so on.
The particular commandment I had in mind,that I've been recalling these past two days,though is the one about not worshiping idols,about having no other gods than Jehovah..And that thought is brought on by the events of the last couple of days.
The single point I'm trying to get at here is this.Did I learn anything at all from those stories of nearly sixty years ago,that leads up to today in a way that I can clearly see?By today,I mean the last few days.And is there anything in those stories that can help me make sense of the world I find myself in right now?What were those stories about,what was their purpose and do they have meaning in the everyday world?In Orlando,Florida,dozens of people lie dead,yet,when I went to Facebook this morning I still find posting from the gun lobby on my page,mostly from my many friends that live in the American south.I answered those postings using the logic from those childhood stories because lately they've been making much more sense to me than they ever have before.To my misguided,though no less valued friends,I spent a good portion of my morning explaining how America keeps having it's current travails,in large part because it has come to regard guns,and constitutional amendments as having the status of deities,which,of course,they are not.Idols perhaps,but not deity.So I've been asking myself,asking others too,do you really want to keep doing this? How long are we too continue doing that which the old childhood stories,God's Word tells us not to do?
All of this starts and grows with a fierce malignancy because we deify that which we should not,and fail to regard with reverence that which we should revere...God,Humanity and Rule Of Law.But my mother told us that years and years ago.And far from becoming irrelevant or obsolete,It just makes so much more sense in today's world.
Blyndpapaya
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