Broken Record

Dear Friends

Five years ago today, February 14, 2018, I was imposing ashes on the foreheads of staff members at Corona Regional Medical Center, where I am a volunteer chaplain. It was the same day we were hearing about the mass shooting at Parkland. The convergence of Ash Wednesday, Valentine’s Day and a mass shooting, (now a regular event in our country), was hard to wrap my mind around.

America should be up in arms about this, but instead, America is awash in arms and ammunition. And, America is awash in apathy, as expressed in this recent letter to the editor I saw:

With more guns than people in this country and access easily available to anyone seeking weapons capable of mass killing, we have to accept the fact that gun violence is part of American culture. It is not going to be prevented by restrictive laws anywhere. We just have to learn to live with it---and perhaps to die randomly because of it.

Really? Is there nothing we can do or sacrifice for the common good? Episcopalians United Against Gun Violence and many other groups don’t think so. (Also known as Bishop's United Against Gun Violence).

If I sound like a broken record, so be it. The Michigan mass shooting is buried on page four of the LA Times this morning. If we see something and say nothing, it soon will not even be reported.

Along with the victims and injured, some clinging to life, let us also pray for the traumatized in Michigan and every place this keeps happening.

John

P.S. I'm sending this early today, so as not to overshadow Valentine's Day, still to be celebrated, and the biblical promise that "nothing, not even death, can separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord."