DEATH ON THE NEUSE RIVER GREENWAY

On October 14 we were enjoying a break at the beach just over the causeway from Pamlico Sound where the mouth of the Neuse River flows from its source in the North Carolina Piedmont where we live. The Neuse is 275 miles of wild beauty and a recreational haven, widening as it reaches the Sound, big enough for graceful sail boats and the cargo ships that leave from the Port at Morehead City.  

Then the news came.  Five dead on the Neuse River Greenway Trail in Raleigh, North Carolina, one of them a police officer, the shooter a 15-year-old boy, in custody and all promise of his life--which surely every life has--now over.  A teenage boy with too few friends and too many guns--this is often the scenario.  

In my hometown of St. Louis, Missouri just eleven days later more murder.  A 19-year-old who had graduated from the Performing Arts School there just last year, opened up and killed a student and a teacher.  We have a performing arts school in our town too, filled with dedicated teachers and promising students.  I wrote about it on May 25, 2022 ("Yes Things are Hard but We Go On"). That was right after a white supremacist killed ten Black shoppers in Buffalo NY, and I remembered a moment of fear in the crowded school auditorium.  

The parents of this 19-year-old and the police had flagged him as a danger, but he bought an AR-15 style weapon legally from a private party.  The police arrived and he was dead within 14 minutes.  A note was found in his car which read, "I don't have any friends.  I don't have any family.  I've never had a girlfriend.  I've never had a social life.  I've been an isolated loner my whole life."  And yet he was remembered at the school as friendly and helpful.  Imagine if he hadn't had access to a gun.  

Imagine if all the lonely, misguided boys and men at their wits' end due to the life crises that happen to us all didn't have access to weapons.  Imagine if there were some limits or some small amount of sense to the number, power and capacity of the guns that just about anyone can legally acquire.  

Imagine if instead of scapegoating the mentally ill, the weapons just weren't out there.  Gun lobbyists say, "Arm the good guys," but good guys become bad guys in a nanosecond.  With the number of armed Americans, can we really predict which one will respond to a situation with violence?  

Imagine if boys weren't given guns as a right of manly passage.  Think if when you were feeling hopeless no gun was within reach to take your own precious life. What if it were simply harder to find a lethal means to do harm?   

This is a sad time.  Whatever our faith, as we know, it doesn't protect us from pain or loss.  No religion is a shield.  In fact, religion can be profoundly misused in a partnership with nationalism to glorify gun ownership, the 2nd Amendment flown on high and the Ten Commandments buried.  We are left mourning the present carnage and dreading the carnage to come.  

We lament and pray and hope (because we must).  We try to alleviate despair and give each other reasons to live.  We can and must cast our votes with candidates who are best prepared to help set our society free from the domination of guns.  

I am home now witnessing a beautiful yellow autumn.  The reds and golds are ankle deep and our driveway can't be seen.  There is wood stacked by the door waiting for a cold snap.  If left to God alone all would be right with the world.  But it isn't. We must ask God to save us from ourselves.  This is my prayer.  AMEN 

Fall Lantana