Sunday, November 5, 2017

It's supposed to be a sanctuary

I know it's too soon, but here goes.

Twenty something killed during the church hour at First Baptist Sutherland Springs, Texas. No details yet, but odds are it's another angry white guy with easy access to guns. Same old same old. 

But this time it was in a church, and given the hour, presumably it was in the sanctuary during worship service. 

The sanctuary. Merriam Webster defines sanctuary as "the most sacred part of a religious building; a place for worship; a place of refuge and protection." Today, thanks to the proliferation of guns in our society, the sanctuary in a small south Texas church became the opposite of all that. It was a place for fear and mayhem and death. It's the worst mass shooting in a church. It's unbelievable that we can even have a data point for that, but we do. According to the Mother Jones mass shooting database, this was the 5th mass shooting in a church, with a total body count of 57. 

And the weak, impotent "thoughts and prayers" from our political class (Trump, Pence, Tx Gov Abbot, Paul Ryan) make me want to puke. In my personal image of God, he's pretty pissed too. He demands action. Each one of them holds the power to actually do something, but they won't. 

Death, prayers, nothing, repeat. And so it goes. 

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