Stop Me If You Think that You've Heard this One Before (on second thought just listen)

Turn, O Lord! How long?

Have compassion on your servants!

-Psalm 90: 13

We're in "thoughts and prayers" mode again.  For the second time in what seems like just a few days.  Add San Bernardino to the list of places that have hosted a shooting rampage.  We're cranking out these things like housewives having Tupperware parties.  Is there a Black Friday deal? Two atrocities for the price of one?

I don't even care what the details of this one are.  I don't care what sick reason somebody had for opening fire.  I don't care whether they got the guns legally or illegally or whether we call them terrorists or not.  I don't... I can't...

My eyes are spent with weeping;

-Lamentations 2: 11a

There is no easy way out of this.  There is no clean legislative solution.  Even if we get rid of the nonsense of the NRA, even if we pass meaningful gun control, these things are still going to happen. We have sold our soul to a demon a long time ago.  That demon's name is violence, Appolluon, the Destroyer.  And he's probably not the only one who has his hooks in this one. I think selfishness, greed and fear are probably riding shotgun.  I think we can't pull our own heads out of our collective rear-ends long enough to simply say that this has got to stop and act like grown-ups.

You, mortal, will you judge the bloody city?

Then declare to it all its abominable deeds.

You shall say, "Thus says the Lord God: A city! 

Shedding blood within itself; its time has come; making its idols, defiling itself.

You have become guilty by the blood you have shed, and defiled by the idols you have made; 

you have brought your day near, the appointed time of your years has come.

-Ezekiel 22: 2-4

Saying it's got to stop is not enough.  This is going to need to be an act of political, social and spiritual willpower that I'm just not sure we have in us.  We have to hit this thing on multiple fronts.  We have to stop talking like we can solve this with more violence and name the sinister force behind this for what it is.  We cannot continue to entrench in our own positions, name each other enemy and expect this sort of thing to cease.  It is a sickness of our soul.

Among some of the tribes of the Great Plains there came a time when they realized that it was too late.  They had lost the fight with the Europeans, the buffalo were gone, the people were starving, and they turned to the one thing they had left, their spirit, and they started the Ghost Dance.  In as much as I understand it, which is not a whole lot, they were dancing to commune with the past.  It was almost sort of an apology to their ancestors, "sorry, we lost."

The whites felt threatened by something they didn't understand and therefore felt powerless to control, and that combined with other factors lead to the massacre of Wounded Knee.  I wonder if massacres are becoming a way of life in America?  We certainly seem to be developing a liturgy for them.  It's getting pretty predictable, maybe we should just go whole hog and make up our own Ghost Dance to apologize to all these innocent people we are failing to protect.  To apologize to crucified God who tried to show us a way that doesn't end like this.  To apologize to the children we're putting out there in this world where violence rules unquestioned.

At least if we dance, no one gets killed, right?