When It’s Spring and The Guns Won’t Turn to Plowshares
My daughter was eight when she told me, “I’m afraid to go to the bathroom at school because they told us if there is an intruder, we’re supposed to pull our feet up on the potty seat."
My sister who taught kindergarten had to line a five-gallon bucket with a trash can for a potty because their lockdowns (not drills) were frequent and long and the kids would need to use the bathroom in the closet where they had to shelter.
More children and young adults are killed by firearms than by cars, making it the leading injury-related cause of death for youth in America.
Brian Hamilton, CC BY-SA 4.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0>, via Wikimedia Commons
Brian Hamilton, CC BY-SA 4.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0>, via Wikimedia Commons
I am so desperately tired of lying to my children that shootings only happen in big cities, only happen at high schools with angry students targeting specific people, that they’re rare and not going to happen in our town. How long, O Lord.
The sculpture Guns Into Plowshares by Esther Augsburger and Michael Augsburger at Eastern Mennonite University has long been one of my favorites. I’ve gotten to meet Esther and when my daughter had piano lessons or we’ve biked the campus, we’ve studied it closely and run our hands over the steel.
On weeks like this, when the news is filled with more heart-dropping tragedy, I’m drawn to art and sculpture and liturgies and prayers and podcasts, anything that shows that we can engage such depravity with beauty, lament and action.
For the rest of this post, I’ll gather some up here and hope that they also will help you move through another senseless week in the U.S. and in our tired world.
Kayla Craig’s liturgies are balms to me and many others. Her book To Light Their Way: A Collection of Prayers and Liturgies for Parents includes “A Prayer for Gun Violence in School” and her most recent post stopped me in my tracks.
https://kellylatimoreicons.com/blogs/news/christ-breaks-the-rifle
One of my favorite modern iconographers, Kelly Latimore, created the most gorgeous painting after print maker Otto Pankok. I just might purchase this version in a prayer candle, since unfortunately, I’ll probably need to use it before the year is out.
Porter’s Gate’s album Lament Songs is perfect for days of and after tragedies. I especially like the song, “Drive Out the Darkness.”
This conversation is a must-listen: “On this episode of Sharon Says So, Sharon is joined by Dr. Jillian Peterson, a leading expert in the research of violence, mental illness, and crime. Today’s conversation may not be suitable to listen to with children in the room, but it is an episode you will want to hear. Sharon and Dr. Peterson discuss the myths and media around violence and mass shootings, and how they compare to the research. They also touch on reframing the idea of the “monster with a gun” and what actions and resources can help diminish gun violence across the country” (Sharon McMahon).
Everytown for Gun Safety and their sister organization Moms Demand Action have been places I’ve turned to for information, advocacy, and resources. I get so overwhelmed as a parent of young children, and sometimes feel helpless, so having a storehouse of expert wisdom and ways to demand change are so hopeful for me.
Here are three resources for talking to our kids as they process what they might hear:
Podcast and article from NPR “How to Talk to Kids When the News is Scary”
St. Fred Rogers comforts families still with “Look For the Helpers” and his foundation has wonderful ideas here in their article “Helping Children With Tragic Events in the News.”
Something Happened in Our Town is a picture book dealing specifically with the aftermath of a racial injustice, but it has a lot to say about kids and questions and how to have hard conversations as a community
I wrote this poem last summer, and unfortunately, it still holds true. Ugh.
Finally, I’ll leave you with a poem I wrote after Uvalde. May Christ have mercy and may we have courage enough to make these words unnecessary.
Bedtime Routine
When I lie
down next to my sapling child,
my lithe-limbed sapling
child, I count
the rings inside her,
the same number of rings as
a whole nursery of sapling
children
who no longer sway.
When I lie, I sneak
a glance, search death
toll on the latest altar
and the first suggested pixels
was the war still in Ukraine.
In a day, I had forgotten, in a day,
acres of scorched earth, sapling
children,
acres of children cut down
in a day. Christ,
the roots are rotten and no one
will toss them into the fire. Instead,
we ask weeping willows to absorb
the flood (the feed) of babies
in cages and babies on stages and
bitcoin and bombs with the prize
of Taiwan
and grocery stores, monkey pox
two years since George Floyd
and hurricanes, curves that we
made
we made.
So, I lie
by my sapling child,
my lithe-limbed sapling child
and think bowls of
plagues are really wrath
we’ve spit for years upon
our children.
-M. Weaver, 2022
