Samhain \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0Moon of the Winter Solstice<\/p>\n
It was 1985. \u00a0A century and millennia ago. \u00a0 I worked on the West Bank of the Mississippi River across from the University of Minnesota. \u00a0My ministry involved community organizing, economic development and affordable housing development. \u00a0The West Bank at the time had a collection of old leftists, Communists, new leftists, \u00a0holdovers from SDS and a new type of political activist, neighborhood organizers. (this is not the same as Alinsky style organizing.) \u00a0It was work that put me into contact with lots of different people from many different walks of life.<\/p>\n
A young couple came to me, too long ago to remember names, wanting to get married. \u00a0This happened a lot though I rarely ever led worship and never had a congregation. \u00a0They were just folks. \u00a0I don’t even remember the wedding. \u00a0Probably it was in Murphy Park. \u00a0That’s where a lot of West Bank weddings happened.<\/p>\n
They went off and formed a family, but I never saw them. \u00a0No congregational life. \u00a0They moved off the West Bank into a neighborhood south of the West Bank, either Powderhorn or Seward. \u00a0I got a call.<\/p>\n
There had been a shooting. \u00a0A woman was dead. \u00a0It was the woman, the mother, the wife. \u00a0She had been on the back balcony of her second floor apartment clad in a pair of coveralls. \u00a0A 22 shell found her, penetrated her heart and \u00a0fell spent, stopped by the back cloth of the coveralls. \u00a0Investigation found that two boys playing with a rifle in an alley over a half mile away had accidentally discharged the gun.<\/p>\n
At her funeral I said then, and believe now, that these kind of deaths are meaningless, absurd and unnecessary. \u00a0The only way to make these deaths meaningful is to use them as evidence for serious, strong gun control legislation. \u00a0Some with real teeth. \u00a0We worked at it for a while, but got nowhere.<\/p>\n
Just this last month a man shot, a clean kill, a young girl and a young boy who had broken into his house. \u00a0He was 61, a former State Department employee. \u00a0A Seventh Day Adventist minister in Rochester shot his own granddaughter. \u00a0 Today’s paper told of the probation given to a man whose 4 year old son found his loaded gun under his pillow, took it out and accidentally shot his two year old brother.<\/p>\n
I also read this week that now over 80% of Americans find global warming a serious threat and want something done. \u00a0I raise this here because it is the same cabal of right wing ideologues, in one case the NRA and in the other energy companies, who have intentionally, note that, INTENTIONALLY, given misinformation, slanted data, paid lobbyists and no doubt have paid the kind of people who can be bought to convince us that gun control is a weak, politically dangerous idea and that global warming is a hoax.<\/p>\n
Both of these groups should receive serious blowback for the years of lies, cynical deployment of persuasion and for each life lost, each forest murdered, each animal dead because of their calumny. These kind of public actions should have serious and public consequences, starting right now.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Samhain \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0Moon of the Winter Solstice It was 1985. \u00a0A century and millennia ago. \u00a0 I worked on the West Bank of the Mississippi … Continue reading It Was, Long Ago, Too Much<\/span>