News of Jonathan Winters’s death arrived today. This conversation with him at the presentation of a Sedona Film Festival tribute is priceless for its humility, humor, honesty, and unvarnished humanity. It begins with a short clip from the Tonight Show with Jack Paar.
Homeless children and a society that didn’t care were the subjects of this century-old prayer by Walter Rauschenbusch, father of the Social Gospel movement that Glenn Beck loves to hate.
The language is dated. The substance is not. As the Senate sets about its debate of universal background checks and other measures to improve public safety, the children of Sandy Hook and their families also come to mind as those who find themselves “homeless” in a violent, uncaring world.
O Heavenly Father, whose unveiled face the angels of little children do always behold, look with love and pity, we beseech Thee, upon the children of the streets. Where men, in their busy and careless lives, have made a highway, these children of Thine have made a home and a school, and are learning the bad lessons of our selfishness and our folly. Save them, and save us, Lord. Save them from ignorance and brutality, from the shamelessness of lust, the hardness of greed, and the besotting of drink; and save us from the greater guilt of those that offend Thy little ones, and from the hypocrisy of those that see and see not, whose sin remaineth. Amen.
Gordon C. Stewart April 11, 201
Today the Senate begins a floor debate on gun control that brings to mind an earlier “floor debate” several months ago in Chaska, Minnesota.
Ever since the community Dialogue on “Gun Violence in America,” I’ve searched for answers to what happened.
A crowd of 138 people came out on Tuesday night to chime in following the tragedy at Sandy Hook in Newtown, Connecticut.
As the night wore on, it became clear that there would be no real dialogue, no moderated discussion. No give-and-take. A series of monologues, without interruption and with a time limit, was the best we could expect.
Fear, anger, hostility and suspicion were in the room. The room was hot.
The months following have been a personal search for understanding of what happened that night, and how we in America move forward together on such a divisive issue.
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Imagine two people going into separate audiologist booths for hearing exams.
John grew up in rural America. Betty grew up in the city.
In their hearing booths Betty and John repeat the word they hear.
“Say the word ‘gun’, says the audiologist.
“Gun.”
Their hearing is good. They say the same word.
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After the hearing test, John and Mary are taken to different rooms for interviews. A social psychologist wants to know what emotions and thoughts are triggered when they hear the word ‘gun’.
“I’m going to give you a word. After you repeat the word, I want you to give me the other words that come to mind. It’s called “word association”. Don’t think about it. Just say whatever comes to mind.
“Gun”:
“Safety, protection, coyotes, wolves, cows, cattle, sheet, careful, responsibility, civil right.”
“Run, violence, threat, death, war, robber, gangs, school massacres, NRA, Sandy Hook.”
NRA:
“Second Amendment, right to bear arms, protector of civil liberties, defender of the Constitution.”
“Right-Wing, powerful, myopic, out-of-touch, vigilantes, white supremacist, radical, dangerous.”
Gun control:
“Government, anti-democratic, anti-Constitutional, intrusion, loss of freedom, fear, police state, socialism.”
“Safety, safe home, necessity, protection, peace, hope, end of fear.
Kingdom of God:
“Hmmm… Soul, salvation, heaven?”
“Hmmm… Safe streets, the common good, love?”
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Both are church members. They are practicing Christians. Betty and John pray the Lord’s Prayer. “Thy (Your) Kingdom come; Thy (Your) will be done on Earth as it is in heaven.”
Could the common bond of Jesus’ prayer bring the two into the same room in a shared search for understanding and action? Or are the formative cultural experiences so determinative that faith and religion are what Marx said they were – blinders that prevent them from seeing anything but what we’ve already chosen to see?
Perhaps some singing might help – a hymn or two – and reflection on the lyrics, like those of Fred Pratt Green (1969):
O Christ, the healer, we have come
To pray for health, to plead for friends.
How can we fail to be restored,
When reached by love that never ends?From every ailment flesh endures
Our bodies clamor to be freed;
Yet in our hearts we would confess
That wholeness is our deepest need.How strong, O Lord, are our desires,
How weak our knowledge of ourselves!
Release in us those healing truths
Unconscious pride resists or shelves.In conflicts that destroy our health
We recognize the world’s disease;
Our common life declares our ills:
Is there no cure, O Christ, for these?
The poem of one dying of cancer:
“NOTES FROM THE OTHER SIDE”
I divested myself of despair
and fear when I came here.
Now there is no more catching
one’s own eye in the mirror,
there are no bad books, no plastic,
no insurance premiums, and of course
no illness. Contrition
does not exist, nor gnashing
of teeth. No one howls as the first
clod of earth hits the casket.
The poor we no longer have with us.
Our calm hearts strike only the hour,
and God, as promised, proves
to be mercy clothed in light.
Jane Kenyon (1947-1995), New Hampshire Poet Laureate, written while dying of cancer.
Pete Seeger hosted the show. Tom Paxton sang the song he composed. That was way back in 1965.
Today….a cute three-year-old boy dressed in a cowboy hat, cowboy shirt, Sheriff’s badge, and cowboy boots, waves his toy pistol as he proudly marches past the tables and the three rifles of the video shooting-range at Heartbreakers pub on his way out the door into the world.
The toy gun manufacturers will deliver him into the hands of the real gun manufacturers; the toy gun will become a real one in the hand of the real man when his little mind expands.
gun clip and magazine
TODAY… a first grader leaves home with gifts of a hair clip and a Time magazine. Her teacher is surprised.
Next day the student returns to school. “I’m sorry,” she says, “I misunderstood. My father meant I should bring you these. He’s a member of the NRA.”
Parents of children killed at Shady Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut arrived in Washington, D.C. with President Obama on Air Force One yesterday. They came to make their case for tough, far-reaching legislation.
Today a news conference has been scheduled by a bi-partisan working group of U.S. Senators to announce an agreement that barely begins to address the problem.
Making a Killing: the Business of Guns in America by former NRA member Tom Diaz unmasks the peculiar legal exemptions that keep the firearms industry in the shadows of American public life. When it was published in 1999, the Ft. Worth Morning Star-Telegram wrote,
“Although the gun industry is shrouded in federally protected secrecy, Diaz has uncovered a remarkable amount of data on individual manufacturers. Making a Killing is frightening and enlightening.”
The National Law Journal review said, in words that apply equally today,
“Rather than rehash old arguments on handgun availability, Diaz looks at the financial motives behind the gun industry. He points out how few restraints the government places on guns as consumer products, and how this lack of restraint plays out in society.”
In Private Guns,Public Health, “a dramatic new plan for ending America’s epidemic of gun violence,” Devid Hemenway uncovers the complex connections between guns and self-defense, guns and homicide, and gun violence and schools. He argues for a bold new public-health approach that would reduce gun-related injury and death. David Hemenway is Professor of Health Policy at the Harvard School of Public Health and Director of Harvard’s Injury Control Research Center and Youth Violence Prevention Center.
as to sin i’m usually all in
help another out sorry no doubt
you’ve heard i’m too busy for that route
…
help a neighbor that’s way too much labor
when i need a hand please understand
i’ll expect you to drop what you planned
…
i always take care of number one
you it’s true are always number two
don’t you wonder i have your number
-Steve Shoemaker, Urbana, IL, April 10, 2013
Nobody told a story the way Pete Seeger did! Pete always lifted people up. “Lift up your hearts!” he seemed to say, and then he would dance and play. The whole world was his communion table. The child in him never faded. He still calls up the child in us.
Waiting for new Krispy Kreme to open.
– Steve Shoemaker, Urbana, IL April 8, 2013
Views from the Edge 