RESOURCES FOR ADDRESSING
GUN VIOLENCE
Because THIS TIME meaningful gun control laws need to be and can be passed . . . we hope you will make your voice heard in meaningful conversations with friends and neighbors, organizations, the media, and Congress.
To that end, here are links to items on this site that have a bearing on the issue of reducing the incredible amount of gun violence in this country.
We hope they they'll be useful in stimulating both your thinking and your taking action.
1. Ways You Can Help -- Help With Writing Your Letters Urging Change "I'm gonna write someone a letter about that!" How often have you said that but then let the idea pass because you didn't have a clear sense of who to send it to? This page will help you with that . . . and a whole lot more.
2. A Sermon on Power from a Christian Perspective Pastor, writer, lecturer and one who articulates well the Emerging Church Movement, Brian McLaren, asserts (along with many scholars whom he quotes) that in order for a culture to change, it is essential that the narrative at the core of the culture change. Such narratives are the stories that a culture tells itself about life: how to live it, what success means, and (among a host of others) how power should best be used. (For an example of McLaren's writings, and one that bears on this, click here.)
This perspective places a premium of what the culture "thinks." In psychotherapy, this is the approach of "Cognitive/Behavioral Therapy," wherein a clients are invited to assess some piece of the internal story they are telling themselves. Is it the most realistic thing they could be thinking? If not, change the thinking to something more realistic and then a path will open up to more creative behavior.
This First Sunday in Lent sermon is based on the Devil's tempting of Jesus in the wilderness. Each temptation concerns how Jesus might decide to use power. Each is directed to Jesus' ego. If we think that our ego alone defines us, we will fall victim to the daily temptations to misuse our own power. From a Christian perspective, it is our having been made in the divine image (Imago Dei) that constitutes our true self. The task is for us to "occupy the true self" and exercise power from that perspective. A new narrative, surely . . . and with new, changed behaviors!
[For an excellent book on the subject of our real identity, see Richard Rohr's latest volume: Immortal Diamond: The Search for Our True Self, (Jossey-Bass, 2013).]
3. Peacemaker's Prayer: Angel in the Dump This poem by Rev. W. Benjamin Pratt, is a meditation inspired by finding a child's handmade ornament on a Christmas tree in the local landfill. An excellent meditation that appeals to "the heart of the matter."
4. A Pastor's Response to the Shootings at Newtown This is a brief, "open letter" posting by Rev. Larry Buxton to his congregation in the immediate aftermath of the Newtown shootings. It paints a brief, sharp, impassioned contrast between the existing cultural "narrative" about violence as articulated by the NRA and that of Christianity.
5. Christmas and Vulnerability: Putting Yourself In The Painting This sermon invites the listener to reflect on a Renaissance madonna and child painting. A parallel is drawn between the children who were killed at Newtown with Jesus in the painting. The sermon invites the listener/reader to identify with the vulnverability of the infant Jesus and then to consider the violence that claimed both Jesus' life and theirs. This, again, explores a new narrative for power: its appropriate use, and what may be necessary to control some forms of its expression. It includes links to President Obama's speech at Newtown the week after the shootings as well as to how to identify and address your Members of Congress in order communicate with them.
6. Do You Hear It? This is a Lenten reflection, written in 2012 to observe Maundy Thursday. While not specifically about gun violence, it is a call to observe The Great Commandment of Jesus that we love (from the Latin mandatum meaning, "commandment") others as he did. This means showing concern for the least among us and loving from the posture of one who serves . . . not as one who is served by others. Again, an upending of the world's usual narrative about power and its uses.
7. News From December 21, 2013 Okay, so we advertise this site as "A Serious Satire. . . ." Here's a news item from a year after the tragic Newtown shootings. Reductio ad absurdum lives!
