Flags At Half-Mast

Like others, we were both stunned to hear about yet another massacre of innocent people. So many questions. So much grief and loss.

There are the usual muted appeals for the restriction of sales of guns and ammunition. Unfortunately, those opposed to such restrictions are right - it would not have caught a person like this this man. There was nothing about him that would have drawn attention to his slide into the dark places that caused him to act.

There are no easy answers or solutions. Such violence is indeed evil, as the President named it. But so is the violence in Syria and Iraq and all the other countries where people have resorted to violence as the only way to have voice in their lives. Violence used to confront violence. 

Outlaw guns? Outlaw violence? Marian Zimmer Bradley wrote a series of science fiction books about a planet where guns were prohibited - the only combat allowed was hand to hand confrontation. Still, violence existed.

Our language is full of violent imagery. When most of us say things like "I could have killed him or her" we use that language metaphorically - as an expression of being driven to the point where we feel helpless. We engage in political wars - or turn away because we feel it is useless to make anything change. We seethe inside over all the things in our life over which we have no control.

I heard Bill Moyers interview Chris Hedges this weekend. Hedges is someone I admire greatly as a person of great integrity - but I was struck by his deep feelings of hopelessness for the future of the world. Moyers continued to push him as to why he continues to write. Hedges' response was that it was out of moral responsibility - and a slender hope for his four children.

Read the interview online. Then ask yourself what is your moral responsibility - as I have been asking myself.