Ordinary Day

Nobody came into my place of work today and shot me.

No enraged white man walked into my children’s school and enacted a deranged video game fantasy on multiple young lives.

My husband did not get killed in a random interstate drive-by.

None of this seems like anything worth reporting. But honestly, I count it as a small miracle. Every day that we walk through the world unscathed by gun violence, it is a gift that I don’t take lightly.  Dumb luck. And big news.

What is NOT big news, is that another–another, another, another, and I’m so sick of saying another–another mass-casualty shooting happened at a public place in a small town. And it is ON the news. But it is certainly not anything out of the ordinary. Because aren’t we all, always, just waiting for the next one?

And we can only muster fresh tears for today’s fallen, the latest casualty in this war on compassion and common sense; we can only cry for the people on the other end of the phone, when death comes calling. We can only shake our heads and say “What’s it going to take?” and “How many more? We can only offer “Our thoughts and prayers with the victims and their families” and light candles for…what, hope? Is that hope we are trying to muster? Or some paltry nod to a peace we don’t really believe in any more?

We can only mourn with those who mourn, and thank God that it wasn’t our people.

Today. Not this time.

But then, we remember. They are our people too.

So we live another day? So what? So what, if we don’t keep insisting that life matters. That the cost of this pretend, deranged kind of “freedom” is too great, and not at all what God, or even James Madison had in mind. What is the point of having been gifted with this brief respite from the hail of gunfire, if we are not going to be advocates for the created order that was given to our keeping?

Today–it was not us. Which means we have air to breathe, and life to speak, and hands to write the letters and claim the hope and carry the light and hold–a little more tightly–to the love that is ours in the flesh, for awhile yet longer.

We are still here. Another five weeks

Days

Hours?

Until the next round. What might we do with the gift of this one more

ordinary day?