Ordinary Mindfulness: Stay Near This Door

Ordinary Mindfulness: Stay Near This Door

Guns Have No Conscience

I worked for one exhilarating year at Eastgate Elementary School, in Bellevue, Washington. (1977/78) Darlene and I used to breakfast every Friday morning, before school,  at Denny's. I remember two things distinctly. While I tucked into pancakes with syrup, Darlene would choose a hamburger for the protein... And Bill, a State Trooper whom we breakfasted with, wore a gun. Properly holstered, but nevertheless an item of  morbid fascination for me.

I had never been anywhere close to a gun before, and exercised a preference for sitting on the OTHER side of it!

 I am neither for or against guns, anymore than I am for or against pitchforks, or ploughshares, come to that, and I have been reluctant to comment on the terrible massacre of the innocents at New Town, Conneticut. Better to weep, than attempt to make  sense where sense cannot be found.

And yet, and yet. I listen to the debate over gun ownership with growing dismay. Who in their right mind would want to own a military-grade assault weapon? Such people call forth exactly the same reaction as I give when a souped up Porsche cuts me up on the B1425 - Imagine it, I'll not own up to it...

I want to get beyond dismay, disbelief, apprehension - every feeling called forth by the gun culture which is far more of a threat to most Americans than the Taliban - and grope towards a new way of thinking about this issue that won't bring us  back to yelling at one another.

This is what I think:

There's no talking to nutters, and probably no easy way of stopping them getting guns.  In perpetuating the two most recent tragedies, both murderes used guns legally obtained by someone
else.

Sensible people own guns because it is legal and acceptable to do so. Let's work on making it less acceptable to sensible people.  Like picking your nose in public.

It may be your right to own a gun. Generously and vocally choose not to.

Distance yourself from gun owners - statistically speaking, you're safer.

Look at the rating offered by the NRA for your representatives. Campaign and vote for those with an 'F' rating.

Invite your faith community to regard the ownership of  weapons as anathema to the Prince of Peace. And talk about it. Get it  up there with abortion and marriage.

Turning the other cheek, my friend, makes reaching for the hand gun pretty much an impossibility. Unless you have it strapped to your head, of course.

The Word Was Made Flesh...

The Word, my deepest love,

Is YOU -

In the

Gentle breeze

Soft Snow

Fragile things.
With wings of gossamer


And the red-toothed lion.

Is YOU

In the child I carried, and gave birth to

In the flowers on my window sill

The man I love,

And ME.

None Of My Best Friends Are Gay

I am going to be brave. When the Pope says that proponents of gay marriage are enemies to peace and justice in our world, he is wrong.  Just about as wrong as he could be, in my opinion.

Gays wishing to marry one another are not strapping explosives to their chests and walking onto buses, or proposing laws (as in Uganda) that homosexual men and women  be put to death. Neither are they scouring the Internet for anthrax spores, or blocking all attempts to slow climate change...

Surely, these are far worse threats to 'justice and peace'?

I am saddened, because I believe in making statements like these, a man of God legitimises the persecution of the gay community, and persecution is what REAL sin looks like.

Attitudes to gay people are coloured by two different kinds of prejudice. Voluntary separation, and culpable ignorance.

I own up to the first. I didn't know that I knew any  gay people until twenty years ago, when a parent of one my students came to explain that she was leaving her husband for another woman. I confess, I was shocked, and had to struggle not to show it. I wrestled with the problem, MY problem, for some time. Was Jane a different person? No. She had become a friend, and her sincerity, warmth, generosity and humour hadn't changed. She  is the person now, that she was before she came out as gay. Light  and shade, good and bad, just like me. She hadn't changed towards me, and I saw no reason whatever to change towards her.

My daughters told me about their friends who were gay, and they taught me that to judge anyone by their sexual orientation was a foolish, unenlightened and cruel thing to do. In my heart of hearts, despite what Christian fundamentalists shriek from their foxholes, I know that rejection and persecution of gay people is WRONG.

The second prejudice is driven by culpable ignorance. Neural science and the science of genetics are demonstrating that homosexuality is NOT unnatural, it is NOT purely a 'lifestyle choice' and it CANNOT be 'corrected' by prayer or reorientation therapies. The facts are out there, published in mainstream scientific journals, and to ignore them in order to hold on to prejudice and fuel persecution is unconscionable.

I plead with all people of faith to take a long hard look at what they believe about gay people. If it tends to hatred, think again about the 'lifestyle choice' of the Prince of Peace, who sought out those whom everyone else marginalised, rejected and persecuted.

Perhaps for some of us it would be a good move to declare gays our enemies, then, for God's sake, we'd HAVE to love them...