No songs today.
No joyous recounting of river trips or excited descriptions of flowers and trees.
Only muffled sobs and the shock of loss.
Another mass shooting. This time Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas. Nineteen children and two adults dead.
It could have been my grandson, Emmett, going to public school this fall. Or my grandnephews, Victor, Parker, and Elliott, or their mom, Catie, who works as a para-professional at their school. Or my grandniece, Emma, just turned 16, the same age as Tate Myre, one of the four students gunned down at Oxford High School last November.
It could have been one of the children of my nephew, Ben, who is a fierce advocate of unrestricted access to guns. He loves his family as much as I love mine. Based on what he's posted on Facebook, I'm guessing he believes that the guns he carries will protect his family if they are threatened by an intruder.
But that's a fantasy. An illusion fed by movies and video games in which the brave hero saves the world by shooting all the bad guys.
In real life, people are more likely to be killed by their own guns than protected by them. Nor do I want a well-meaning civilian shooting up a public place in response to a real or perceived threat. Leave that to law enforcement, who are trained and accountable.
This madness must stop.
Here in this country, we are as much in thrall to the gun lobby as were the ancient Israelites to the pagan god Baal. Or to the netherworld god, Molech, to whom children were sacrificed in the Hinnom Valley in Jerusalem.
We sacrifice our children to the Great God Gun.
I want to cry out like the prophet Jeremiah against this idol-worship.*
Something has got to change.
I have no argument with hunters. We walk through the same woods in the autumn, breathing the crisp air, rustling through oak leaves. In winter, we look for deer tracks in the snow. We love many of the same things.
But no one—apart from the military and law enforcement—should have legal access to assault weapons. We cannot know for sure whether every person who enters a school, supermarket, church, synagogue, university or dance club is not suffering from a mental illness. But we can try to make sure they are not armed.
Please.
Enough.
Yesterday, Senator Chris Murphy of Connecticut, who represents the Sandy Hook community where 26 elementary school students and educators were killed in December 2012, pleaded with his colleagues for a compromise on reasonable gun control.
Today I am writing my representative, Elissa Slotkin, to ask if the Problem Solvers Caucus, a bi-partisan group that championed her Lend-Lease Act to help Ukraine, could do something about this war in our streets.
And I will join others at the Capitol Building in Lansing for "Woke Wednesdays," simply to stand and pray and write letters. "No talking, no demonstrating," the carpool organizer said. "Just standing against the violence."
I will stand in grief and mute fury like the ancient Israelites in exile who hung up their harps in the willow trees beside a river rather than sing for their captors. My home river is the Huron, and beside it are mostly oaks, but no matter. Any riverside will do for mourning.
Please.
Enough.
When Ed and I were walking at Hudson Mills Metropark this morning, we heard the voices of children in the distance. "Maybe toddlers at the playground?" I said to Ed. Then we came upon a group of six schoolchildren walking with an adult chaperone who was carrying a clipboard while the kids were peering into the vegetation along the trail. It looked to be a scavenger hunt.
"Hello, fellow hikers," one cheerful kid called out to Ed and me.
"We have to find a potato," another kid confided.
I could have told him that both skunk cabbage and cattails have fleshy, tuber-like roots. But the only way this kid would find a potato along the trail would be if the teacher who created this fun science activity had placed it there ahead of time.
May we show the same creativity and foresight as this teacher to protect our children's lives.
May all children walk in the woods, in their classrooms, in their neighborhoods, in our nation—wherever their feet take them—joyously and unafraid.
It's up to us.
"On the willows there we hung up our harps." Psalm 137:2 (NRSV)
Playlist: "On the Willows," Stephen Schwartz, Godspell, 1973.
* 2 Kings 23:10