I’ve been tired, and I know I’m not alone in that. People are tired. Not inconvenienced. Not stressed but tired, bone tired as the seasoned saints used to say. Wars are waging in the Congo, Iran and Palestine while cable…
‘Change for me, but not for thee’
Between 1999 and 2025, there was an average of six active shooter events in K-12 schools in the United States per year. As of April 27, there have been 151 mass shootings in the United States this year, killing 178…
82-year-old woman’s faith led her to fight against gun violence
When asked why she joined the fight against gun violence, Paula Hawthorn’s answer was simple: “Because God told me to.” A staunch Episcopalian who doesn’t tend to speak or hear directly from God on a regular basis, the 82-year-old retired…
‘Tragedy brought us together, but love keeps us together’
When a mass shooter killed 11 people and wounded six at Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh Oct. 27, 2018, Eric Manning got on a plane in Charleston, S.C., and flew immediately to the scene. He knew Hazzan Jeffrey Myers…
Trump and allies blame ‘radical left’ for political violence
Donald Trump and his allies wasted no time after Charlie Kirk’s murder Sept. 10 blaming the “radical left” as the source of political violence in America. In an address from the Oval Office, Trump said liberals’ criticism of conservatives is…
This isn’t ‘their’ problem; it is ‘our’ problem
In June 2015, my wife and I were on a mission trip with students at a church where I previously served as a youth pastor. The trip had all the makings of a typical youth excursion; students leaving things behind,…
‘My teachers shot’
“My teachers shot.” That’s what a 10th grader texted her mom on Wednesday, Sept. 4, from a locked-down school room at Apalachee High School in Winder, Ga. There was “blood everywhere,” she later recounted. And another teacher “put pressure on…
We should follow the words of Jesus, ‘No more of this!’
For as long as I can remember, I have loved watching rivers, with their beautiful shapes, surfaces and movements. If you’ve ever watched a river, I’m sure you’ve noticed its current is a powerful thing. It shapes the river’s boundaries…
How long will we tolerate The Lottery?
My middle school memory keeps rewinding the film our teacher showed one day of this disturbing short story by Shirley Jackson. Everyone in a small town is assembling. Something important is about to happen. Like a human Farmer’s Almanac, one…
Apalachee High School: The questions that haunt me at night
I am writing this post very early in the morning of Friday, Sept. 6. It is less than 48 hours after 14-year-old Colt Gray decided to start his freshman year at Apalachee High School, 40 minutes north of me, by…
Dispatches from a Black trauma surgeon
Within these four walls I have wrecked the lives of far too many Black mothers. The family room is a windowless, white-walled cell in the hospital, with hazy fluorescent lighting, hard-bottomed plastic chairs, and a worn end table with a…
The NRA is a (mostly) changed organization, but the American public must not look away
In 2018, I did something most people wouldn’t dare do. While making a play about guns in America, I took a group of high school students to the NRA annual meeting in our hometown of Dallas. What we saw and…