October 1: Glorious Life Ending, Umpqua Community College, President Obama, Prayer

Glorious life ending.  There must have been a moment when his son had gasped for air, the last time, as Jesus must have.  But as Jesus had risen, he wanted his son to rise up, organs and spirit and mind intact, and everything to be as it had been not so long ago.

Ives in mourning, not long after his son's death.  He wants his son back.  He wants to hit rewind and put his arms around his son.  Not let go.  That's what Ives wants.  He doesn't want revenge or justice.  Ives wants Robert, organs and spirit and mind.  Whole.

I'm not going to make jokes tonight or try to be clever.  I've spent a good portion of this evening watching and reading news reports about another school shooting in the United States.  Roseburg, Oregon.  Umpqua Community College.  Ten people dead.  Ten wounded.

There are quite a few people like Ives in Oregon tonight.  Fathers and mothers who are suddenly childless.  I watched President Obama talk about how tired he is of standing in front of a podium to talk about another senseless massacre.  He was angry.  He talked about politicians quibbling over gun rights while people are dying in churches and school campuses and movie theaters.

I am going to pray for the people in Roseburg tonight.  For the students of Umpqua Community College.  Something needs to change.  I am not anti-gun.  I am pro-common sense.  The shootings in Oregon today did not have to happen.  We should have learned from Columbine.  From Sandy Hook.  From Emanuel AME Church.

To everybody reading this post, I want you to pray for the victims of Umpqua and their families.  And I want you to get pissed because there are a whole lot of politicians in Washington, D. C., tonight who should be ashamed of themselves.  They are at home with their spouses and children, eating dinner, watching TV, listening to the names on the news.  Names of young persons who should be at home, eating dinner, watching TV.

Saint Marty isn't doing a cartoon tonight.  It's not a night for laughter.  It's a night for taking stock, making decisions.  Being sad.  Getting mad.

Maybe we need to put all our kids in towers to keep them safe...

Rapunzel's Fall

by:  Lisa Russ Spaar

At night, falsetto,
he'll mimic the Crone.
Believing it's her,
she's tempted not to answer.
Finally, her candle licking
the window's black hole,
the uncoiling snake of braid
will hurtle down,
blue as the cord that bound her,
once, to her own lost mother,
its fringes brushing his boots.
Up he'll clamber, hungrily,
ferret-quick, toward the song
he's heard--Go dig my grave,
both long and deep,
lay a marble stone 
at my head and feet--
his body on the sill
blotting out entirely
any world outside the trembling
garden of her body
she's about to step beyond.