2015 Mass Shootings and a Prayer on the Declaration of Independence

More mass shooting in 2015 than there have been days. Impotent leadership. After so long, even the most ardent prayers only placate. Sadness. Anger. Grief. Fear.  I am coming to believe that as sharers in the sin-sick soul of this nation, we each more Helen Lovejoy than Sojourner Truth.

My prayers today and from now on are for the victims and the community of San Bernardino and far too many others, for the parents of special needs kids and those who are for them everywhere who are sleeping and living less easy in these days.

My prayers are no longer for our leaders, for they, again, have run from the call. My prayers are now for the American people, especially for the women in America, that we must now, as we have done in the past, lead a reluctant nation to recover its right mind and heart, to remind or leaders that the governed do not consent to life as we have come to know it in 2015. We now live in a land where the self-evident truths of the Constitution are not being upheld. If we are not safe from violence we perpetrate   against ourselves, pointing only fingers of blame scapegoated others rather than examining the conscience of our common life, no person or groups of persons in this land is equal. As we are slaughtering one another in the street, at seemingly random times and in disparate and random places, we are cannot live any common life that was worth the lives and sacrifices of our Founders. We are by no means a free nation if we carry arms against one another for our fear. Rather, we are slaves of ignorance and despair.  None among us can be happy if we cannot ever find new meaning and hope, renewed life and greater purpose on the other side of our grieving, for as yet, it has no end.

It is not our leaders who have wondered far from our Creator, is us. And it is only we, in prayer and repentance, action and dedication, who can begin the long slow of return. Amen.   

“If the first woman God ever made was strong enough to turn the world upside down all alone, these women together ought to be able to turn it back, and get it right side up again! And now they is asking to do it, the men better let them.” 
― Sojourner Truth

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.--That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed”