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Bare Trees in Fog

From Dunblane Scotland to US Students:

Writer's picture: Marie LaureMarie Laure

“We want you to know that change can happen,” the letter reads. “Never let anyone forget. There will be attempts to deflect you, to divide you and doubtless to intimidate you, but you’ve already shown great wisdom and strength.


On 13 March 1996, 43-year-old Thomas Hamilton entered Dunblane Primary School and killed 16 children aged five and six, as well as their 45-year-old teacher, Gwen Mayor, before shooting himself dead. The guns and ammunition used in the shooting were all legally purchased.


“The gunman owned his four handguns legally, and we knew it had been too easy for him to arm himself with lethal weapons. Like you, we vowed to do something about it. We persuaded British lawmakers not to be swayed by the vested interests of the gun lobby, we asked them to put public safety first and to heed what the majority of the British people wanted.”


The massacre was a watershed moment for gun control laws in the UK, sparking “nationwide mourning and a furious debate about gun control that pitted grieving families against conservative politicians and a powerful gun lobby”, Buzzfeed reports.


Just over a year later, handguns were outlawed in Britain under the Firearms (Amendment) (No. 2) Act 1997.


There has never been another school shooting in the UK!



I walked this path everyday for a week last summer in this peaceful village in Scotland.

It was unbeknownst to me that there had been a tragic shooting and it seemed completely implausible when I learned about it in the memorial chapel for children inside the beautiful Dunblane Cathedral.



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© 2023 by Marie Laure

​Six Stages of Pilgrimage:

  • The Call:

  • The opening clarion of any spiritual journey. Often in the form of a feeling or some vague yearning, a fundamental human desire: finding meaning in an overscheduled world somehow requires leaving behind our daily obligations. Sameness is the enemy of spirituality.

  • The Separation:

  • Pilgrimage, by its very nature, undoes certainty. It rejects the safe and familiar. It asserts that one is freer when one frees oneself from daily obligations of family, work, and community, but also the obligations of science, reason, and technology.

  • The Journey:

  • The backbone of a sacred journey is the pain and sacrifice of the journey itself.  This personal sacrifice enhances the experience; it also elevates the sense of community one develops along the way.

  • The Contemplation:

  • Some pilgrimages go the direct route, right to the center of the holy of holies, directly to the heart of the matter. Others take a more indirect route, circling around the outside of the sacred place, transforming the physical journey into a spiritual path of contemplation like walking a labyrinth.

  • The Encounter:

  • After all the toil and trouble, after all the sunburn and swelling and blisters, after all the anticipation and expectation comes the approach, the sighting. The encounter is the climax of the journey, the moment when the traveler attempts to slide through a thin veil where humans live in concert with the Creator.

  • The Completion and Return:

  • At the culmination of the journey, the pilgrim returns home only to discover that meaning they sought lies in the familiar of one's own world. "Seeing the place for the first time . . ."

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