Read Their Names. by Jane Tawel

Note: It takes all the chutzpah I have to post the following, not because I don’t believe it but because I have lost jobs, friends and family from trying to speak out about important things and I have lost hope that any one really wants to change. I see people just going on with their lives as if we are not living in a frightening age right now and most frightening of all, I see people who claim to know God or Jesus act as if somehow God’s grace will cover their sins against others. Just a head’s up: If you actually read the Bible, it is pretty clear that it won’t. America is like the rich nameless man in The Christ’s parable. The rich man lives with homeless Lazarus at his door and spends his life eating, drinking and being merry behind his safe mansion doors, and then when he dies and realizes he is not actually going to heaven after all, has the gall to say to God, “oh if only You had told me! At least go tell my brothers so they will be saved.” God’s reply would be well for us to take to heart today: “He said to him, ‘If they do not hear Moses and the Prophets, neither will they be convinced if someone should rise from the dead.” (Luke 19:31).

Some of us believe that Someone did rise from the dead. And we still are not convinced.

Read Their Names

by Jane Tawel

November 17, 2018

“It’s starting to rain again; it’s… the rain had (uh) slacked up a little bit. The back motors of the ship are just holding it (uh) just enough to keep it from…It’s burst into flames! Get this, Charlie; get this, Charlie! It’s fire… and it’s crashing! It’s crashing terrible! Oh, my! Get out of the way, please! It’s burning and bursting into flames and the… and it’s falling on the mooring mast. And all the folks agree that this is terrible; this is the worst of the worst catastrophes in the world. Oh it’s… [unintelligible] its flames… Crashing, oh! Four- or five-hundred feet into the sky and it… it’s a terrific crash, ladies and gentlemen. It’s smoke, and it’s in flames now; and the frame is crashing to the ground, not quite to the mooring mast. Oh, the humanity! And all the passengers screaming around here. I told you; it – I can’t even talk to people, their friends are on there! Ah! It’s… it… it’s a… ah! I… I can’t talk, ladies and gentlemen. Honest: it’s just laying there, mass of smoking wreckage. Ah! And everybody can hardly breathe and talk and the screaming. I… I… I’m sorry. Honest: I… I can hardly breathe. I… I’m going to step inside, where I cannot see it. Charlie, that’s terrible. Ah, ah… I can’t. Listen, folks; I… I’m gonna have to stop for a minute because I’ve lost my voice. This is the worst thing I’ve ever witnessed.”
— Herbert Morrison, Transcription of WLS radio broadcast describing the Hindenburg disaster.

“Said his grieving and furious mother: “My son was in Las Vegas with a lot of his friends, and he came home. He didn’t come home last night, and I don’t want prayers. I don’t want thoughts. I want gun control, and I hope to God nobody sends me any more prayers. I want gun control. No more guns.” — Mother of Telemachus Orfanus, killed November 7, 2018 by The United States of America’s inability to deal with guns.

Read their names below. Read each one. Then realize the next time your child or grand child or your spouse steps out the door to get a coffee, or your grandpa goes to his place of worship, or your kinder gardener goes to class!! — it could be their names. OH THE HUMANITY! It is way past time to change course. Way past. Read each name and then tell me: Does this feel like freedom to you, America? No, what you are witnessing time after time is the “worst catastrophe in the world”. Moses did not use prayer to change the world, he acted. Jesus did not stop at prayer for the Caesars and Pharisees and Sadducees and unclean poor of the world; he wrested the weapon from Peter’s hand and said go change the world. Gandhi did not change the world through his “thoughts”. Mother Teresa did not change the world by “thinking” about the lepers of India. Dr. Martin Luther King Junior had to walk across bridges and go to prison not just preach and pray. Read the names. Then do something if as you claim, you really love your country, your freedoms, your children, and your God. Read their names. They do not appear on your favorite show, they were not your combatant enemies, they won’t be getting another life in a video game, and none of them will be home tonight. And we have decided we love our guns, sitting in our little home safes, protecting us from what? Unless you are hunting for your food, no one should need a gun in America. And maybe if no one else had guns, we wouldn’t have overstressed cops killing innocent security guards mistaking them for just “regular” black people; instead of the hero that Jemel Roberson was before he was killed by a gun. Read his name. Read their names. When did we become zombies who love our guns more than we love people? Oh, the humanity.

Read their names:

https://wapo.st/2qPYTGY?tid=ss_mail&utm_term=.d5abd342d94b

Now make two lists. On one side put all the names of people you love and / or people who love you. On the other side put all the names of your favorite weapons that you love. Now choose.

“For what does it profit you if you gain the whole world but in the process, lose your souls?” — Jesus Messiah, who never carried a weapon except the weapon of his death on the Empire’s cross.

Now look at these faces. They all died because of guns. Not people. Not someone else. Guns. We fight the war on cancer and we don’t say, oh cancer doesn’t kill people, people do. We fight the war on terrorists and so we “invade our freedoms” and check whether or not you are carrying a bomb on a plane. Are we really that stupid about guns? Really? Are we really that selfish and ignorant and greedy and rich and do not care about our children any more than that?

Look at these faces. And then let it begin with you. If you own a gun — turn it in, bend it like Beckham, and make art out of it. If you care about unborn babies, start caring about the born ones and protest until we get serious gun laws in this nation. And for God’s sake, if you care about your own kids, or grandkids, or parents, or cousins, or friends, fight the ruling powers of the billionaire clubs of the NRA and the government oligarchy and insist on change on huge scale, no holds barred, lets save our lives for Pete’s sake scale. And oh, yes — For God’s sake, stop using His name in the vanity of your “thoughts and prayers”.

Just a final “fun fact” from Jesus: “We know that God does not listen to sinners, but if anyone is a worshiper of God and does his will, God listens to him”. “Then Jesus said to them, whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross daily and follow me.”

They have names. Look at their faces.