It’s was a beautiful morning. I was sitting in my garden having a rest after putting in some more plants and then the day was shattered, like so many have been recently, by the news of another school shooting. “When is it going to end?” I asked myself. Everything has changed once again. What I was going to write about no longer seems relevant. The only things that matter now are all the families who have to go through the pain of losing their love ones in such a senseless way.In a nation like ours, with all the resources that we have available why can’t we solve this problem? Have we become so desensitized that we have no desire to hold those to account who are responsible for this madness?
It isn’t just the gun manufacturers. It isn’t just the mental health community or the social case workers that let people fall through the cracks. It isn’t just the media, who in a way glorify the violence and its perpetrators by broadcasting the chaos that they create over and over and over ad infinitum. It isn’t just the manufacturers of video games who have created a culture of violence. It isn’t just rap that glorifies violence and an in-your-face lifestyle.
It’s all of us, even those who care about our fellow man. It’s all of us because we were at rave at each other. It is each one of us thinks we are in the center of the universe and our own well-being is the most important thing.
I think we need a major reassessment of our worth. It doesn’t matter how many cars you on or how many square feet your houses are or how fashionably you were dressed or what fine restaurants you’ve always dined in. We are failing as a society and as individuals if we fail to protect our most precious possession, our children and each other.
The problem is, laws are not going to change the situation. That’s the first thing we talk about, gun laws, all kinds of proposals have been made for how to correct this situation with laws, but none of them are going to make the difference. We have to address the reason behind all of the desperate lives that cause people to think they have no recourse but to lash out at others.
This time, however, the cacophony of protests was dimmed by another unlikely event taking place, the wedding of Prince Harry and Meghan Markle. For a few hours on Saturday morning, a good portion of the world was transfixed as an American commoner, with one failed marriage behind her, of mixed race, raised by a single black mother, from a family that could be described as dysfunctional at best, vowed before God and the world to love and be faithful to the person who is fifth in line to the throne of England.
Accompanying all of the pomp and circumstance that is a Royal wedding, was a fiery message about love by a very black American Episcopal priest, Bishop Michael Curry taken from the book of Amos in the Bible. His words may have been for Harry and Meghan, but they were words that the whole world needed to hear.
“When love is the way — unselfish, sacrificial, redemptive, when love is the way, then no child would go to bed hungry in this world ever again. When love is the way we will let justice roll down like a mighty stream and righteousness like an ever flowing brook. When love is the way poverty will become history. When love is the way the earth will become a sanctuary. When love is the way we will lay down our swords and shields down by the riverside to study war no more. When love is the way there’s plenty good room, plenty good room for all of God’s children.”
And I would add, when love is the way, we won’t have to worry about our children being slaughtered in their classrooms by their peers.
Does it sound too simple? Perhaps yes, but desperate times call for desperate measures and sometimes there is nothing more desperate than love. The words to the old Doobie Brothers hit come to mind: “Without love, where would you be now?” Look around, this is what it looks like without love.