It defies logic to deny that what happened in
Connecticut yesterday or Aurora recently, etc., was perpetrated by
other than someone owning guns. I know the statistics, thousands lose
their lives in car accidents, in household accidents, or swimming.
Right, so we can’t outlaw cars, goes the argument, or kitchen
knives or ladders or pools. Anything can be used as a weapon, but
“anything“ is not a weapon, it has many various purposes, and can
only incidentally serve as an instrument of death. Only guns,
however, are designed and manufactured with the one single intent and
function of killing, the question of murder aside. And guns are and
will remain our most very lucrative business.
As long as we hold dear our American “2nd-Amendment-Rights“ mentality and its sorely misguided interpretation which argues that “guns don’t kill, people do“ (wrong: people with guns kill), we will continue to see and to suffer more of this. Those who honor and uphold the gun lobby’s enormous clout over govt. and human dignity may also include many “pro-lifers“ who would see in the recognition of a woman’s right to decide for herself over abortion, a license to kill, to murder. And then simultaneously insist that everyone and anyone can just stockpile an arsenal of assault weapons because “the 2nd Amendment says so“… One is convinced that this part of our population actually identify “being American“ with having the “right to own and bear arms,“ just like that. Which is like countless Muslims I’ve met who identify being Muslim with avoiding pork – why it’s that simple.
These friends of the NRA and the firearms industry in general may shed crocodile tears over yesterday’s murder of children, or no tears at all. Sarah Palin never apologized for placing crosshairs over Rep. Gifford’s face shortly before the latter was shot in the head. No remorse can be expected from such elements of our society, these upstanding Americans, nor responsibility.
My Christmas at any rate will be a sober one, mighty sober, reflective and in anguish. I’ll be physically here in Belin, but my heart will be spending the holidays in a certain township in Connecticut.
As long as we hold dear our American “2nd-Amendment-Rights“ mentality and its sorely misguided interpretation which argues that “guns don’t kill, people do“ (wrong: people with guns kill), we will continue to see and to suffer more of this. Those who honor and uphold the gun lobby’s enormous clout over govt. and human dignity may also include many “pro-lifers“ who would see in the recognition of a woman’s right to decide for herself over abortion, a license to kill, to murder. And then simultaneously insist that everyone and anyone can just stockpile an arsenal of assault weapons because “the 2nd Amendment says so“… One is convinced that this part of our population actually identify “being American“ with having the “right to own and bear arms,“ just like that. Which is like countless Muslims I’ve met who identify being Muslim with avoiding pork – why it’s that simple.
These friends of the NRA and the firearms industry in general may shed crocodile tears over yesterday’s murder of children, or no tears at all. Sarah Palin never apologized for placing crosshairs over Rep. Gifford’s face shortly before the latter was shot in the head. No remorse can be expected from such elements of our society, these upstanding Americans, nor responsibility.
My Christmas at any rate will be a sober one, mighty sober, reflective and in anguish. I’ll be physically here in Belin, but my heart will be spending the holidays in a certain township in Connecticut.
So Rana and I sat up all
evening and late into the night (Berlin time, the service started at
8pm EST) glued to CNN. We recognize that for those broadcasting it's
all the business of infotainment, in all its cynical glory - but we
had to watch because we are afixed, we are in anguish.
So we watched the memorial with all the nice eccumenical eulogies and then the local town hall rep., the gov. and the Prez. We were enormously and deeply affected by the rabbi who was the first of those invited to get up there. and coming a (relatively) close second was the Muslim imam. there were no thirds. The rabbi put out what was and is most needed. no one (unfortunately) could give what this rabbi gave - his words were sparse and to the point and from the heart with broken voice...and then he sang. Not the Kaddish exactly but a deeply deeply gripping Hebrew hymn tailored for this occasion, and with such a richness of grief and of authentic mourning and sadness and reality. I was already standing at the moment and remained there as he beckoned the hall to all stand, and I wept throughout his wonderful, terrible, blessed singing. THAT was a mourning, which must have brought the breaved infinitely more sense of being understood than all the shit which preceded and followed. thank Jehovah, that the Jewish expression still has it in it to deliver when it comes to something like this.
The Muslim came in 2nd in my book, less for what he said or quoted, although parts were good - I mean that from the standpoint of real spiritual gut-power - but he scored with me on authentic emotion and it was clear to see how broken and stricken he was.
Unfortunately - and here I had to comfort my dear protestant Rana - everyone else, from Catholic to Methodist to Lutheran to Pentecostal to even Baha'i to whatever else, offered with more or less practiced emotions, the awful awful usual victuals of bla-bla-bla, dry, "reassuringly" full of platitudes, colorless, prepared, predigested, and dead. dead words, no music (or nothing which could remotely compare with what Rabbi Shaul from the local synagogue put out). We bemoan that the Christian clergy just doesn't have it any more, or ever so rarely. her priest and pastor from her childhood, he had had it in him in full, he would have brought the house down with the ardent simplicity and co-grieving which was sorely lacking in that parish yesterday.
Well, that was our take.
And I KNOW exactly what I would have said or done on that pulpit had I been there, and in what measure. I know exactly because as I said to Rana, what they don't grasp at all (except the rabbi in this case) is that with people in a bereavement of this magnitude especially, and so immediately after as well - you HAVE to go down into the pain, the SHIT, you HAVE to get your fingernails dirty, your knees have to be covered with the earth of humility, you have to do this first and reach their hearts BEFORE you speak of elevating, ennobling, eternal verities.
You have to get across to them that their lost ones are here and now and in reality AS in eternity, to get their focus on that love which binds us defnitely and palpably and tangibly and powerfully. You can't embrace or empower anyone with platitudes about any kind of churchy "afterlife," you have not earned the right to do that - unless and until you can feel the snot in your own nose and the choked breath in your own heart, and say what really is, that the loss and the grief and the sadness and the horror and the pain and the sheer torture of living every moment from here on with this knife in one's heart IS REAL. And to BE with that, and to be with that with them. THEN and only then, can one go from there to elevate and bring the thing home.
http://news.yahoo.com/tearful-plea-victims-dad-deadly-rampage-233719408.html
UPDATE, 19 Apr. 2019 and 07 Dec. 2019:
So we watched the memorial with all the nice eccumenical eulogies and then the local town hall rep., the gov. and the Prez. We were enormously and deeply affected by the rabbi who was the first of those invited to get up there. and coming a (relatively) close second was the Muslim imam. there were no thirds. The rabbi put out what was and is most needed. no one (unfortunately) could give what this rabbi gave - his words were sparse and to the point and from the heart with broken voice...and then he sang. Not the Kaddish exactly but a deeply deeply gripping Hebrew hymn tailored for this occasion, and with such a richness of grief and of authentic mourning and sadness and reality. I was already standing at the moment and remained there as he beckoned the hall to all stand, and I wept throughout his wonderful, terrible, blessed singing. THAT was a mourning, which must have brought the breaved infinitely more sense of being understood than all the shit which preceded and followed. thank Jehovah, that the Jewish expression still has it in it to deliver when it comes to something like this.
The Muslim came in 2nd in my book, less for what he said or quoted, although parts were good - I mean that from the standpoint of real spiritual gut-power - but he scored with me on authentic emotion and it was clear to see how broken and stricken he was.
Unfortunately - and here I had to comfort my dear protestant Rana - everyone else, from Catholic to Methodist to Lutheran to Pentecostal to even Baha'i to whatever else, offered with more or less practiced emotions, the awful awful usual victuals of bla-bla-bla, dry, "reassuringly" full of platitudes, colorless, prepared, predigested, and dead. dead words, no music (or nothing which could remotely compare with what Rabbi Shaul from the local synagogue put out). We bemoan that the Christian clergy just doesn't have it any more, or ever so rarely. her priest and pastor from her childhood, he had had it in him in full, he would have brought the house down with the ardent simplicity and co-grieving which was sorely lacking in that parish yesterday.
Well, that was our take.
And I KNOW exactly what I would have said or done on that pulpit had I been there, and in what measure. I know exactly because as I said to Rana, what they don't grasp at all (except the rabbi in this case) is that with people in a bereavement of this magnitude especially, and so immediately after as well - you HAVE to go down into the pain, the SHIT, you HAVE to get your fingernails dirty, your knees have to be covered with the earth of humility, you have to do this first and reach their hearts BEFORE you speak of elevating, ennobling, eternal verities.
You have to get across to them that their lost ones are here and now and in reality AS in eternity, to get their focus on that love which binds us defnitely and palpably and tangibly and powerfully. You can't embrace or empower anyone with platitudes about any kind of churchy "afterlife," you have not earned the right to do that - unless and until you can feel the snot in your own nose and the choked breath in your own heart, and say what really is, that the loss and the grief and the sadness and the horror and the pain and the sheer torture of living every moment from here on with this knife in one's heart IS REAL. And to BE with that, and to be with that with them. THEN and only then, can one go from there to elevate and bring the thing home.
http://news.yahoo.com/tearful-plea-victims-dad-deadly-rampage-233719408.html
UPDATE, 19 Apr. 2019 and 07 Dec. 2019:
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