Syndic Literary Journal
June 2022
Published by LeRoy Chatfield
Uvalde Is Family To Me
Letters to the Publisher
- I heard Michael Moore say that we need to accept that there are those in our country who love their guns more than they do their children. Amen. Here is the frame for dialogue of present infatuation with guns.
- The answer such people give to the violence is to provide more guns thereby adding fuel to the flames of death.
- Assault rifles. Dictionary defines “assault” as “a physical attack” An assault rifle attacks well beyond the physical. It attacks and undermines moral structures that hold the sanctity of life. I must affirm and proclaim Albert Schweitzer’s Reverence for Life and Jesus’ gospel of love.May I have the voice and will to shout it from the roof tops.
- “You must let little children come to me, and you must never stop them. The kingdom of Heaven belongs to little children like these!” Matthew 19:14 J. B. Phillips translation
- Uvalde has been a topic of conversation in our retirement village dining room. We try to avoid any confrontations or arguments at the table, but there are those who nonchalantly parrot Abbott and Cruz .I will try not to debate, but give witness to a loving and more rational alternative.
Prohibit by federal legislation the possession, sale and manufacture of any automatic weapon for civilians.
Require by federal legislation a license for any civilian to possess any single action weapon.
Limit by federal legislation a possession license to no more than five years, and then require a renewal process as rigorous as the license’s initial issuance.
Donate to federal legislative candidates who would enact the above.
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Leroy, brother in faith and values,
Rec’d your personal letter this a.m. about the super tragedy in Uvalde. My wife and I have been following the terror of the terrible war in Ukraine and asking ourselves the question: what could be worse? And then we had our answer: Uvalde, Texas.
Our solution to the problem of “murders by gun” in the united states: vote the enablers out of office, whether local, state or federal.
Thanks for sharing your personal response and asking for ours.
Respectfully and with comprehensive admiration,
Bob (Timothy) and Marilyn rose Edwards
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Nightmare on Good Friday
Last night I went to the Holy Thursday Mass.
Father washed the feet of 12 of God’s holy people
And we all washed each other’s hands.
We sang “Where charity and love prevail
There God is ever found.
Brought here together by Christ’s love,
By love are we thus bound.”
Then we ate the Body of Christ
And we became more fully the Body of Christ ourselves, together…
And He our Head more fully.
At 5:00 a.m. this morning,
I awoke startled by a frightening dream….
I had come to Sacramento
(in Spanish the “Holy Sacrament”)
With a large group of brothers and sisters
To talk with our elected leaders
About our collective responsibility
As Catholics, Christians, human beings…
To respect the lives
Of our unborn, poor-born, foreign-born
And unloved-born, brothers and sisters.
Suddenly a young Hispanic woman
(Or was she African-American?)
Burst into the large room, where we had gathered!
She was a street soldier,
A gang member,
A revolutionary.
Or was she an infantry-person
Of the U. S. Army?
I could not tell.
She wore baggy camouflaged clothes
With an M-l6 semi-automatic strapped over her shoulder.
She was mad…
And bad…
And sad!
To my surprise,
No one else noticed her,
So she grabbed her weapon
And began to to fire a burst of rounds
Into the ceiling!
Till all were shocked to silence,
Except for a scattering of terror-shrieks
And the muffled sounds of
Scrambling under tables.
Then she spoke:
I can’t take Jesus’ Body into mine,
Because I have taken in
Too many men!
And I have driven His Body out of mine
Seven times already…tiny and innocent!
(I am crying as I write this
For she is crying inside,
But hides her tears behind her gun.)
I was born poor (she continues)
My mother tried to love me,
But when the police killed my father,
She left the seven of us little ones
To work in the fields.
Sometimes my mother did not come home till morning.
My brother explained:
Sometimes Mr. Jim, her boss, needed her
Late at night…
So she stayed with him in a motel.
Sometimes when my brothers were older,
They taught me to play house
And slept with me ’cause I was scared…
And did things I didn’t understand…
(Again she began firing her M-l6 into the air
And we all ducked!)
And now I’m mad! She screamed.
She throws the gun to the floor and begins to sob.
The crowd stands motionless.
We are immobilized.
Paralyzed by what we see and hear.
Then a tall, grey-haired man in a suit
Breaks free from the room full of statues,
Walks boldly from the crowd toward her.
He throws his arms around her as she weeps.
Then an old woman hobbles over to her.
Weeping she hugs them both.
Now the whole room swarms to embrace her
And I remember Jesus in the crowd with stones
That no one threw.
She could not take in Jesus,
So Jesus takes her in.
By Joseph V. Melton
April 21, 2000
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